There\u2019s a huge amount of data about your competitors available to you. The same data is available about you to your competitors. All this competitive intelligence exists now and is likely used against you in some shape or form.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And this knowledge is power. Especially in the hyper-competitive SaaS startup industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Competitive analysis is the research you do in order to dissect, learn more about and asses the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It can help you be on top of the game and gain a competitive advantage in your industry. It can help you out-hustle, out-think and out-play your competition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Competitive\n analysis can help you uncover the best moves of your competition which \nyou then can improve on to beat them. The process goes something like \nthis:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here\u2019s how to outplay your startup\u2019s competitors using SaaS competitive analysis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You know who your competitors are, don\u2019t you? Have you determined the best companies in your niche?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cannot think of any competitors? Simply go to Google and search for your niche or a relevant keyword phrase for what you\u2019re building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You will get a list of sites that Google thinks are the most valuable within that industry. These are your competitors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Search the name of your competitor on Google and check out their official website.<\/strong> What you look for will depend on your industry but some things to explore:<\/p>\n\n\n\n These will all give you a nice overview of what the company stands for, what they focus on, how they communicate and what steps they take in order to convert their website traffic into business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now it\u2019s time to look a bit deeper. Let\u2019s get under the hood of the website of your SaaS startup competitors:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Look up their website on <\/strong>Similar Web<\/strong><\/a> (freemium).<\/strong> Everything that I list below you can get using the free version:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Very valuable information, don\u2019t you think? From this you will know a great deal about their marketing and promotional strategy. How do they drive traffic, what works well and not so well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Look them up on <\/strong>Whois<\/strong><\/a> (free tool)<\/strong> to learn the history behind their domain name:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Look them up on <\/strong>Spyonweb<\/strong><\/a> (free tool)<\/strong> to get:<\/p>\n\n\n\n This can sometimes uncover more details in case it\u2019s not too clear who runs or owns the site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Type \u201csite:theirdomainname.com\u201d into Google<\/strong> for the number of content pieces published on the domain name that Google has a record of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Look them up on <\/strong>Website Grader<\/strong><\/a> (free tool)<\/strong> to check the performance of their site. Good alternatives are Google\u2019s own PageSpeed Insights<\/a> (free tool) and Mobile-Friendly Test<\/a> (free tool).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Look them up on <\/strong>BuiltWith<\/strong><\/a> (free tool) or <\/strong>Wappalyzer<\/strong><\/a> (freemium)<\/strong> to discover which technology they use in their stack:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Look them up on the <\/strong>Internet Archive Wayback Machine<\/strong><\/a> (free tool).<\/strong> It allows you to see the archived versions of their site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This\n is useful to get a better overview of their progress. You can for \ninstance take a look at what messaging they used and tested at the \ndifferent stages of their history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most businesses will list these somewhere on their site such as the \u201cTeam\u201d or \u201cCareers\u201d page. You should also look them up on Crunchbase<\/a> and AngelList<\/a>. For crowdfunding take a look at Indiegogo<\/a> and Kickstarter<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This gives you insight into where the company is in terms of the size of their operation and even helps you estimate their revenue. Gives you ideas about where they are going and what their goals might be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One way to start this is to figure out which and how many customers they highlight on their site. Many brands publish client case studies, testimonials or simply list some of the customers they are most proud of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Be careful of fake reviews but despite those this gives you an idea of how quickly they are adding new customers, how happy those customers are with the product and what market share they hold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Setup email alerts on <\/strong>Google Alerts<\/strong><\/a> (free tool)<\/strong>\n so you can monitor the mentions the brand gets online. This will get \nyou notified if the company is in the news or if someone else talks \nabout the brand on the web.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This helps you discover how well they\u2019re doing in terms of marketing and PR and gives you insights into their communication and media strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Email marketing is one of the most effective ways of selling online. It\u2019s likely that your competitors use email marketing so you should learn about how they do it. Explore these areas:<\/p>\n\n\n\n You should sign up for their newsletter<\/strong> too:<\/p>\n\n\n\n A blog is usually one of the biggest organic drivers of traffic for any website. Blog posts are valuable content pieces that get shared on social media and ranked in search engines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Subscribe to their blog via email or by using <\/strong>Feedly<\/strong><\/a> (freemium).<\/strong>\n Brands normally post a wide variety of content on their blogs which \nhelps you follow what they are up to and learn from what they do:<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the easiest ways to come up with new and brilliant article ideas is to monitor your competitors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And one of the best ways to judge the quality of their content is to see if and which of their articles are shared the most in social media. If people are sharing their content, it shows that there is an interest and demand for this idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Analyze their Twitter account to uncover fake followers using Fake Followers Audit<\/a> (free tool) and see their true influence using SparkScore<\/a> (free tool).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Their social media posts can give you great insight into the company and how they\u2019re doing. Check out all the social profiles they promote on their website<\/strong> and follow them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If they don\u2019t list their social profiles on the website, simply search for them on the individual networks. Then keep an eye on:<\/p>\n\n\n\n I usually don\u2019t put too much emphasis on the total number of followers as that is easier to game but focus more on their engagement rate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Engagement rate shows the percentage of their total audience who actually engage with the content they publish. You sum up all the engagement you see on a post and divide it with the total number of followers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Google is still the top traffic referral source for the majority of websites. And Google traffic is especially valuable because of the purchase intent of the searchers.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Google users normally find you because they are searching for an answer or a solution to a problem they have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you\u2019re the right service or product for that issue they may just as well buy. This is why search traffic is important and why you should learn how your SEO benchmarks to your competitors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Backlinks are one of the top factors in getting your site to rank higher in search results. If you know who\u2019s linking to your competitors it might help discover new opportunities and get the same sites to link back to you too. Like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Moz<\/a> and SEMRush<\/a> are two of the best premium tools with free accounts but there is a big variety of SEO tools out there and Cyrus Shepard has a great list of free options<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s a couple of other ways you can use SEO tools in your startup competitive analysis:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Identify your content gap to be inspired for ideas to create content about. Content gap is the list of topics that your competitors rank for in search and that you don\u2019t.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n This can give you a great list of content ideas you should try to publish content about in order to boost your search traffic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Identify the link intersect. It basically helps you find websites that link to one or more of your competitors but don\u2019t link to you.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n These are sources which you should aim to reach out to as it\u2019s likely that they would be open to link to you too or to allow you to guest post or to syndicate your content on. All this is useful to boost your blog SEO<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nGet the traffic stats and referral sources<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Get registration details for their domain name<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Learn about other sites they own<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Get the full list of pages and posts they have published<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Check the performance of their website<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Discover tools and apps in their technology stack<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Uncover the history and progress of their site<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
A look at the team and the funding<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
A look at their customers and online reviews<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Monitor the brand mentions online<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Learn about their email marketing strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Analyze their blog and content strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Learn which of their content is shared the most<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Analyze their social media followers and influence<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
SEO: Traffic from search engines and backlinks<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Content your competitors rank for that you don\u2019t<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Websites that link to your competitors but don\u2019t link to you<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
What\u2019s their paid search engine marketing strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n