
As data-driven marketers we tend to look internally for ideas on how to improve our performance. But we shouldn’t ignore valuable lessons offered by competitors and peers when it comes to sharpening our digital pencils. Today, we’ll learn three basic steps to approaching competitive intelligence, a necessary practice for any digital marketer.
1. Identify the best brands and embrace their content marketing tactics.
Instagram serves as an efficient social platform if you can provide compelling content, particularly for B2C marketers. However, many brands struggle to differentiate themselves. For example, how can a marketer at a magazine company improve their Instagram strategy? The answer can be simple — learn from the best!
The first step is to take a look at the type of content your competitors publish and understand the tactics and strategy behind it. As an example, National Geographic is the top non-celebrity account on Instagram with over 41.8 million followers. In addition to their eye-catching imagery, part of NatGeo’s Instagram success comes from something counterintuitive — text!
Using TrackMaven, the Maven Labs team found that NatGeo’s Instagram captions used about 83 words on average over the last year — that’s twice as long as this paragraph! While many brands let the image do the talking, NatGeo differentiates itself by telling a unique story with each post.
2. Find the topics that resonate with your audience.
Examine blog posts that are performing well for competitors that have similar target audiences to yours for guidance on topics you can use to create effective content. Look for common keywords across a set of high performing blog posts to determine topical themes.
A B2B marketer working at a software company might notice a keyword like “trends” appearing frequently in their competitors’ posts. This should come as no surprise to a savvy marketer because the ever-evolving software industry hinges on what’s coming next, especially as calendars turn over to 2016.
Using TrackMaven data, the Maven Labs team analyzed the last 30 days’ worth of blog posts across the software industry. We found that posts containing the word “trends” in their titles received 2.3 times more shares on social media than those without on average. We’re big on using data to support our marketing decisions here at the Lab, and this data suggests that we’ll get a 2.3x return on our investment by writing on the topic of current and upcoming trends. By researching competitor blog content we maximized our return on investment by identifying compelling topics for our content.
3. Crowdsource topics for your content calendar by reading competitors’ social content.
When it comes to sourcing ideas for your content calendar, it’s a good idea to look at those around you in your competitive space. For example, with winter weather on everyone’s minds in the wake of a massive east coast storm, let’s look at how competitive intelligence can help a digital marketer for an energy utilities company. The marketer can examine what their company’s competitors are posting on social to understand the ongoing conversation about winter weather preparedness and how to improve their social media strategy around the topic. What content should be promoted? Should the company offer a counterpoint to a competitor’s post? Are there topics getting attention on competitors’ social channels that the energy utilities company should also use? A savvy marketer might spend time reviewing competitors’ content on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other platforms every week for competitive intelligence. At Maven Labs, we do this daily.
Waze is my favorite example of crowdsourcing’s potential. Waze is a navigation app that offers users real-time updates on traffic patterns and optimal routes based on the experience of their fellow users. Just like Waze, TrackMaven offers real-time updates, only on digital content, not traffic. This allows the Maven Labs team to quickly understand what’s been published across a number of channels, and offers us the numbers behind these posts that provide context behind their performance. We’ll use this data to make content decisions based on these numbers-driven insights.
These are valuable steps to making better content by being aware of the competitive landscape. Learning from our competitors keeps our ideas fresh and gives us new methods to approach familiar topics. Use these steps to practice exceptional competitive intelligence and improve your content marketing!