4 May 2022
SaaS Competitive Analysis: All you have to know to deal with Competitors
SaaS competitive analysis is what you need to overcome all the hardships and outperform in the market.
Do you have a plan to enter the market and market your new business? Do you want to be in charge of the first page of Google's search results? Want to be inspired to start a new campaign? Do you strive to outperform your competitors?
What is a SaaS Competitive Analysis?
Competitive analysis or competitive analysis is a complete and thorough analysis of your rivals in the market. Through this competitive analysis and the unlimited data available thanks to the internet, you can easily and quickly discover all the advantages and disadvantages of your competitor's businesses using some marketing tools.
Instead of letting your competitor's business operates this strategy and discovering your assets and disadvantages, it's time to manage all that data, particularly in the hyper-competitive SaaS start-up industry.
Moreover, a SaaS competitive analysis is vital for discovering your saas competitors and other saas companies precisely.
Why conduct a SaaS Competitive Analysis?
The main benefit of this research is that you will win the competition and be first among your direct competitors. In short, it can help you think out of the box and gain the antagonism, learning the most effective aptitudes of your competitors and trying to defeat them.
In brief, it's time to get your competitive advantage and gain your customer success.
For example, suppose opponent X excels in social media strategy (i.e., has a comprehensive plan for the most basic social media platforms and sells services and products through them), which determines its success.
In that case, you will observe its strategy, work harder and create a better and more complete plan.
Marketing strategies are fundamental for beating your indirect competitors and other saas owners.
The five advantages of SaaS Competitive Analysis
1. You have a thorough understanding of your competitive landscape, what they do, why they excel, and how to defeat them.
2. You've determined whether or not they're severe threats to your company.
3. You figure out their most effective methods for attracting and maintaining an audience; how many followers do they have on social media? Do they use paid advertisements? Do they use SEO tools?
4. You recognize past mistakes or gaps in your current strategy and correct them using the lessons learned from a successful company. It's time to change your tactics to fit your company's needs.
5. Allow the elements to inspire, influence, and modify you to succeed in your own business. Remember to check the market trends and the latest insights.
How to conduct a SaaS Competitive Analysis?
SaaS competitive analysis consists of many steps. You cannot follow them all, which we do not recommend if you are looking for the best possible results.
We've divided SaaS competitive analysis into four sections for ease of understanding.
THE FIRST PART: The List of your Opponents
The first part of the survey is mandatory and must take place to conduct the SaaS competitive analysis. What should you do? Take a close look at your competition. Who are your direct competitors? Who has the same niche market as you?
A Google search will answer all your queries efficiently and quickly, presenting you with a set of sites for this market share. Who comes first in searches? What is your place?
To sum up:
- Know exactly who you're talking to and who you're talking to.
- Make a list of your competitors.
- Choose the one you believe you will be able to overcome the most easily or whose strategy appears to be more feasible for your standards due to budget constraints, etc.
- Continue on various to the next section.
It's time to gather competitive intelligence once you've determined who your competitors are. Some things can be quantified, while others cannot. You can find this information from various places, including their websites and third-party review platforms.
THE SECOND PART: WebSite Information
1) Learn by exploring their website
Search your competitor's name on Google and study its official website carefully. Of course, the information you will look for in this depends on your niche. Remember to examine your competitors' traffic sources and new ideas about your SaaS company.
In general, gather data about:
· The website's setup
· The information it provides
· The interaction with the public,
· Its core message
· Which aspects of the company it mainly promotes (e.g., professionalism, innovation, etc.).
· The possibility of a demo or free trial
· In what other multimedia does the company appear
· The company's content on the site (e.g., if the firm has a blog, what texts upload, how often, what language they use, etc.).
The above will give you a global overview of the competitors about who they are, their target audience, and their social network or generally their marketing strategies.
2) Comprehend traffic statistics and other sources
Through Similar Web, search statistics for the opponent's website you are studying. For example, learn everything about traffic and precisely:
· The number of visits
· The average visit duration
· The bounce rate
· The top referral sites
· The traffic from social media and the search engines
Through the free version of Similar Web, you can find all the above and many more.
So what are you waiting for?
3) Find information through the domain name
Using the Whois, you can do complete competitor research and learn about the company's foundation, such as when the domain name was first registered and by whom, when the business renewed it and when it's about to expire.
You will learn more about the other SaaS companies' management and information about their establishment to find your market competitiveness.
4) Discover if the firm owns other sites or companies
Search Spyonweb for information on other websites or corporations may own. For instance, learn about other websites hosted on the same IP address or websites that share the same Google Analytics account.
Maybe some of your competitors belong to the same subsidiary.
5) Encounter all the pages and published posts
The process for this is relatively easy as you need to click on Google "site: theirdomainname.com," and so you will find all the content published on the domain name that Google has a record of.
6) Check the performance of the website
You can be a step ahead of your competitors by finding information about the speed of the opponent's website, the mobile responsive, and if the rivals operate a more SEO-friendly strategy for the website through PageSpeed Insights.
7) Discover practical tools
Through BuiltWith, encounter additional tools or platforms your opponents use and link to their website. For example, which blogging platform a SaaS business uses to build and run the site or web analytics to count the audience, and which tools for pop-ups and ads.
8) Discover the history and advancement of their site
You can catch all the modifications to the opponent website you study through the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. What has changed? What mistakes have been corrected? Do you encounter any errors on your competitor's website?
This step is vital to understand the competitor companies better and broaden your competitive analysis.
9) Monitor the brand mentions online
Through Google Alerts, you will receive notifications about your competitors and their impact online.
For instance, you can find out if your potential customers are talking about them, what they say about their SaaS product online, and overall their communication and media strategy performance.
THE THIRD PART: Customers & Employees
1) Find information about the team members and the offering careers
Search the competitors' websites and identify areas about "Team" or "Careers." How many people make up the team? What experience do people carry? Who is the manager? For what jobs are they currently hiring for?
You can understand the company's operation, the revenues, whether the existing staff can cover all the needs, and where the SaaS business aims.
2) Encounter the customers and their reviews
Many businesses use client case studies, testimonials, or a list of a few customers on their website to demonstrate that they are better than the competition.
Look for reviews and social media engagement about the competitor company on other websites, Google, and other search engines.
You can determine whether the target audience is satisfied, what complaints they have, and how to address their pain points. Be wary of reviews that are either fake or paid.
THE FORTH PART: Digital Marketing Strategy
1) Email Marketing Strategy
Email marketing strategy is a tactic you should adopt, effectively increasing online sales. However, if your competitor uses the above tactic, find out what call-to-action or pop-ups are utilized to persuade visitors to sign up.
But mostly look for the content of these emails. To do this, subscribe to their email marketing. Thus, you will receive and study the content of those emails, the frequency, the hours and days of their sending, the language and tone of voice are used, etc.
After observations and studies, you can effortlessly create your email marketing through tools such as MailChimp.
2) Examine the blog and content strategy
The blog, promoted on social media and submitted to search engines, is perhaps the most critical organic traffic driver for a website.
Examine the blog's content, covering topics, and how new texts are posted. For example, do they primarily post informative texts, texts for new releases, or customer case studies on the blog?
Others disclose their strategies, lessons learned, revenue, and even issues they believe are essential to small businesses or start-ups.
The study will help you understand which content has the most impact.
3) Study the shares
Another factor that testifies the effect of the content is the shares on social media. Through Buzzsumo, you can find all the shares for each social media.
4) Examine social media, followers, and influence
The social media strategy is distinctive of every organization or company. For example, well-designed graphics and exciting content testify to a goal-oriented company with great products and services regarding its social media.
Study all the social media that the company has:
· The content it posts.
· The hours and days it chooses to publish.
· The frequency of posting.
· The engagement of posts and the interaction with the public (if it responds to comments etc.).
Please pay close attention to engagement rate, i.e., the percentage of their total audience who engage with their content. How do you find this? By dividing all the engagement, you see the total number of followers.
5) SEO, Search Engines, and Backlinks
The search engine that users use the most is Google, so you need to have a good position in this engine to increase the chances of users clicking. Therefore, check your competitor's place in the machine. Because this is what the purchase intent of the searchers looks like.
The more careful and targeted the SEO strategy, the higher you will be in the Google rankings, and the users will click.
The best way to enhance SEO on Google is through backlinks. Backlinks, or inbound links, are when one site links to another using a hyperlink. If several areas converge to the same website, search engines may consider this content valuable and high quality and ranks well.
6) Paid search engine marketing strategy
Find out through SpyFu opponent's search engine paid marketing strategy, i.e., how much traffic they gain from search engines and what percentage they pay for this traffic, or how much money they spend on search pay-per-click advertising.
7) Paid social media advertising strategy
In addition to the content posted by the competitor and the shares on social media, you should also study their advertising strategy. Which media do they choose for ads? What is the structure of these ads? What graphics, headlines, and copies do they use for each medium? Every time someone clicks on an ad, which landing page does the consumer reach?
You can find the advertising strategy in the sector "advertising" on any social media.
Disclaimer: All the tools mentioned in the text are either free or freemium. But you can find online paid tools too.
Although SaaS competitive analysis appears to be difficult and time-consuming, it is well worth the effort because it allows you to outperform your competitors and lead the market.
Of course, there's a case to be mad for repeating the procedure for other competitors. What is certain is that you will be able to complete the process faster and more accurately after your first attempt.
Do not hesitate to contact us if you want to boost your business performance and learn all the secrets of the marketing world. Our approved team is here to assist you with anything you require!
