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How to study your competitors' marketing strategy

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Are you looking for ways to gain a competitive edge in your marketing strategy?
Would you like to study the marketing strategies of your dropshipping competitors?

If you answer yes to any of these questions, you are in the right place.
Competitive analysis can be a powerful tool that can help you identify your competitors' weaknesses and leverage their strengths to develop your own strategy.
Especially if you are doing online sales (e-commerce or dropshipping), you need to know that your competitors are tools that you can use to fine-tune your marketing strategy.
Those who are in the market before you know the market better than you do and you better learn from their mistakes.

In this article, we'll look at what a competitive analysis is, the benefits of a competitive analysis and how to properly study your competitors' marketing strategy. Read on to find out more and discover the secrets of a winning competitive analysis marketing strategy!

Study your competitors' marketing strategy: What is it all about?

Studying your competitors' marketing strategy involves researching and analyzing your competitors' strategies to better understand how they work. This is an essential part of any marketing strategy, as it allows you to identify potential opportunities, assess threats and develop a more effective approach to marketing.

Whatever product you decide to sell today in dropshipping, know that there have already been people who have sold it before you. Even if it is not necessarily the same product, there have probably been other similar products. Indeed, studying the marketing strategy of your competitors will allow you to know what works on the market about a product in order to duplicate it to your business .

Competitive analysis involves researching your competitors' products, services, prices, marketing messages and customer service. It also involves analyzing their customer base, target markets, advertising campaigns and pricing strategies. The goal is to understand how your competitors operate and how you can outperform them.

Why study your competitors' marketing strategy?

The benefits of a competitive analysis are numerous. By understanding your competitors' strategies, you can create a more effective strategy for your own. You can also identify potential opportunities, assess threats and better position yourself in the market. In addition, a competitive analysis can help you identify weaknesses in your competitors' strategies and develop strategies to capitalize on those weaknesses.

Competitive analysis can also help you better understand your own business. By studying your competitors' strategies, you can identify areas where you can improve your own business. In addition, you can use the information gained to develop better marketing strategies and target the right customers.

You should know that in dropshipping, there is no point in trying to reinvent the wheel and do what nobody else has done before. It may take you enough time and money to test all the strategies to finally find what works. However, we all know that when we start dropshipping, we are often limited by the budget and we don't have the possibility to test endlessly . That's why you have to study your competitors' marketing strategy in order to establish your base.

How to conduct a competitive analysis

Conducting a successful competitive analysis requires a comprehensive approach. Here are 6 steps you can take to study your competitors' marketing strategy.

  1. Identify your competitors
  2. Identify the products and offers of your competitors
  3. Examine your competitors' prices 
  4. Analyze your competitors' sales strategies and results
  5. Analyze your competitors' presence on social networks  
  6. Conduct a SWOT analysis to determine strengths, weaknesses, opportunities  

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Study your competitors' marketing strategy: Identify your competitors

The first step in a competitive analysis is to identify your competitors. Obviously, if you don't know your competitors, you won't be able to analyze them. There are several methods to identify your competitors in dropshipping.

For example, you can search for them on social networks by searching for keywords that are related to your field of activity. You can also search for them on search engines using the same keyword technique.
Don't hesitate to read this article in which we share with you the best tips and methods you can use to quickly find your competitors.

In your research, don't forget to also consider trends and changes in the industry to identify any new competitors that may have recently entered the market.

Identify the products and offers of your competitors

The product or service is at the heart of any business, which makes it a good place to start. Especially in dropshipping, the product is your main marketing argument. It has to be good and meet a specific need in the market.

In fact, you will have to analyze the full range of products and services that your competitors offer. During this analysis, here are some questions you should try to find answers to. 

  • What type of supplier do they use?
  • Do they produce the products themselves?
  • What is the average number of orders per day?
  • What are the characteristics and needs of their ideal customers?
  • How does the company differentiate itself from its competitors?
  • How do they distribute their products/services?
  • What do their customers like about their products?
  • What are their customers' complaints?

Write down all the answers to these questions in a table that you will later use to select your products. These answers will allow you to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors' products .

You will be able to use it in the choice of your products and the implementation of your marketing strategy.

Examine your competitors' prices 

In dropshipping, price is one of the most important factors that lead prospects to buy from your site.
If you offer a good product with a bad price, you will not be able to sell it.
In fact, as an online seller, it is important to spy on the prices your competitors are offering for their products.

Try to average out the price for your products. If you notice that there are several complaints about a product feature, you can for example try to improve the product. By doing so, you will be able to raise the price of your products while having as a marketing argument the improvement of the product features.

Analyze your competitors' sales strategies and results

Another point you should consider and analyze when studying your competitors' strategy is the sales method . Generally, each company has its own strategies and methods of acquiring customers.
Your goal here is to be able to identify the methods they use that work best for them. 

This useful information will give you an idea of how competitive the sales process is and what marketing arguments you can use to make your store even more competitive. Here are some questions you can try to answer during your analysis of your competitors' sales strategies. 

  • What does the sales process look like?
  • What are their favorite sales channels?
  • How have they optimized their online stores?
  • How are their advertising creatives?
  • What marketing arguments do they use?
  • What is the company's average monthly turnover?

Repeat this analysis on 3 to 5 of your competitors. In the end, you will end up with different strategies. All you have to do is eliminate the ones that don't work and adapt the rest to your business. 

If you are in dropshipping, don't hesitate to copy the different creatives your competitors use for their ads and adapt them to your product. 

Analyze your competitors' presence on social networks

Networks have become essential for online sales. All e-commerce brands use them as traffic acquisition levers. However, each social network has its own particularities and audience.
For example, TikTok is known as the main social network of the youth layer. Indeed, if you sell products that are typically aimed at people under 25, TikTok is by far the best place where you can promote these products. 

The first thing to do is to identify your potential audience and create your marketing persona. With this, you will be able to identify the needs, the fears, the status of your customers. It's a kind of sketch that you will make to have an eye on your target customer.
With your marketing persona, you will be able to identify your competitors on the social networks on which they are present. Analyze the different marketing and content creation strategies they use. Do not hesitate to make an average to see the types of publications that solicit the most engagement from their communities. 

You will just have to adapt all this in your marketing strategy. To learn more about spying on competitors on social networks, read this article here.

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Conduct a SWOT analysis

The SWOT analysis is the last step to study the marketing strategy of your dropshipping competitors. It is nothing but the synthesis of everything you have done so far. 

To perform a SWOT analysis of dropshipping competitors, you first need to understand what your competitors do and what their products and services are. We have already seen how to do this in the previous chapters of this article.
Then you need to define their internal and external strengths and weaknesses. In the case of internal strengths, you will need to look at their marketing strategy, their advertising creatives, their promotional offers, while internal weaknesses may include their lack of awareness, high cost, weak product line, inactive customer service, etc. 

You will also need to analyze external opportunities and threats, such as new products or services offered by your competitors, changes in technology and trends, and new laws and regulations. Once you have gathered all of this information, you can prioritize it and make informed decisions about how you can improve your products and services.

You should do this for your top 5 competitors so that you have enough data to work with. Only with all this information could you develop your own marketing strategy.
Feel free to search the internet for SWOT templates that you can fill out for your analysis. 

How can you use Minea to study your competitors' marketing strategies?

We've just looked at the various steps involved in analyzing the marketing strategy of your dropshipping competitors. Several tools are available on the market to enable you to carry out an in-depth study of your competitors' marketing strategy.  

Here, we present Minea, an all-in-one tool that lets you study your competitors' marketing strategies. Minea features 3 main functions.

The product search tool

Minea's product search tool or Ads spy tool is a tool that allows you to find products to sell on your store. If you are an e-merchant or if you are just starting dropshipping and you have no idea what product to sell on your store, Minea is the perfect place where you can find products to sell on your online store. 

Minea collects the best advertisements on the biggest social networks and stores them in its database. All you have to do is search them based on the search criteria of the winning dropshipping product. You can also use the tool's filters to optimize your searches. 

The store spy tool

The second tool that Minea offers is its store spy tool. With this tool, you can easily spy on your competitors' store. It is a tool that also allows you to see the competitors who sell the same product as you. 

You can then spy on their stores and get relevant information. Feel free to test Minea for free here. 

The spy tool of influence marketing

Minea's latest tool, which sets it above all other spy tools, is its influence marketing spy tool. Influencer marketing has become almost unavoidable for major e-commerce brands. And it's these brands that are the main players in the online sales market. 

Indeed, to establish your marketing, you must necessarily spy and analyze their marketing strategies. And for this, the best tool is Minea's influencer marketing spy tool. The tool allows you to analyze product placements, the biggest e-commerce brands and even the influencers they collaborate with. 

This is the all-in-one tool that all e-tailers and dropshippers need.

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Conclusion

Competitive analysis is a valuable tool to help you better understand your competitors' strategies and develop a more effective marketing strategy. By researching your competitors and understanding their strengths and weaknesses, you can create a strategy that will give you an edge in the marketplace.

If you want to unlock the secrets of a winning marketing strategy based on competitive analysis, start by studying your competitors, analyzing their strategies and identifying their weaknesses. As a competitor analysis tool, we recommend Minea. 

Frequently Asked Questions

How can you study your competitors' marketing strategy?

Here are the 6 steps to follow to analyze your competitors' marketing strategy. 

  • Identify your competitors
  • Identify the products and offers of your competitors
  • Examine your competitors' prices 
  • Analyze your competitors' sales strategies and results
  • Analyze your competitors' presence on social networks  
  • Conduct a SWOT analysis to determine strengths, weaknesses, opportunities  

Can you use SWOT to analyze the competition?

A SWOT analysis of competitors is simply a way to assess the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of your competitors in order to better understand their business and, therefore, yours.

So you can use SWOT to analyze your competitors, but not only that. There are several other steps to analyze your competitors as we have seen in this article. 

What's the best competitive analysis tool?

Minea is by far the best tool you can use to analyze the competition. It offers 3 features: the ads spy tool, the shop spy tool and the influencer marketing spy tool. 

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