Invaluable anecdotes on competitive marketing

As a child, all of us must have participated in the obstacle course race in our school sports. Now, competitive marketing is quite the same. Businesses, trying to carve a niche, have to keep an eye out on their competitors to excel in a particular market. This is what competitive marketing is all about.

Now, as a student of marketing, you will have to be familiar with this particular concept to excel in class. With that thought, let us dive in to discuss various aspects associated with competitive marketing.

Definition of Competitive Marketing

It is a distinctive form of a marketing strategy that is formulated by an organisation after considering the competitors. The actions, the weaknesses, the strengths and policies of the competitors are evaluated before developing new strategies.

If an organisation lowers the price of its products or services, it’s competitors will also be affected by the decision. They will also tweak their marketing strategy, depending on the competitive environment to attract the consumers by reducing the prices or by offering gifts with every purchase.

Without a competitive marketing strategy, your business will have a hard time drawing in consumers. Unfortunately, there’s no one-size-fits-all method that you can adopt in this case, because every business encounters different setbacks in different markets.

Types of Marketing Competition

There are several kinds of competition in the market, which are mainly based on how many sellers are there within the market. Each of the categories comes with its own set of attributes and assumptions, which in turn affect the decision making of the businesses and the profits they accumulate.

Perfect Competition

Perfect competition is a market system identified by many different buyers and sellers. As per the theoretical definition of perfect competition, there is an infinite number of buyers and sellers.

With so many competitors that exist in the market, it is impossible for one player to modify the existing price in the market. If they try to do so, buyers and sellers have endless alternatives to look for. The best example of a market with the almost perfect competition that exists is the stock market.

Monopoly

A monopoly serves as a perfect contrast to the previously mentioned form of marketing competition. In case of pure monopoly, there is only one manufacturer of specific services or products, and generally no prominent substitute.

In this specimen of marketing competition, the monopolist is able to charge whatever price they wish to owe to the lack of competition, but their total revenue will be restricted by the willingness or ability of consumers to pay the price. For example, a pertinent instance of monopoly could be Monsanto. Nearly 80% of all corn harvested in the United States is trademarked by this organisation. That allows Monsanto with an extremely high level of market power.

Oligopoly

An oligopoly resembles a monopoly in more ways than one. The only distinction is that instead of having only one producer of a good or service, there are multiple producers. Or, at least plenty of producers that form a dominant majority of the production within the marketing system.

Oligopolists don’t enjoy the same pricing power as monopolists. However, it is possible that oligopolists will collaborate with one another to set prices in the same way a monopolist would without diligent government regulation. To offer an instance of an oligopoly, let us spare attention on the market for gaming consoles. This market is ruled by three powerful organisations: Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo.

Monopolistic Competition

Monopolistic competition is a particular kind of marketing system that combines elements of a monopoly and perfect competition. Similar to a perfectly competitive market system, there are several competitors in the market. The difference, in this case, is that each competitor is different from others in a way that some can charge higher prices than a perfectly competitive business.

A great example of this form of market competition is music. While there are many musicians, each artist is distinctive and is not perfectly replaceable with another artist.

Competitive Marketing Strategies

Developing competitive marketing strategies can prove to be extremely beneficial for your business. Analysing what it is that makes a competitive marketing strategy tick can assist your business to get a foot on the ladder. Better yet, your findings could even allow you to outrank to businesses much bigger in size than yours. The following are some factors to consider to develop a competitive strategy.

Social Media

Social media can be a perfect vehicle for effective competitive marketing strategy. Now, a great way to learn how to utilise social media is to opt for social media competitor analysis. It will enable you to prepare your own social media strategy. Check out what type of content your competitors are sharing, what kind of language they are utilising, which images they are sharing (e.g. quotes, images of their office, testimonials, etc.), blog content and captions.

Branding or display ads

It would be a novel idea to head to your competitor’s website and notice their remarketing. If they are efficient, you must note down their display banners and the message they are trying to convey.

However, make sure not to imitate their marketing campaign, rather let it serve as an inspiration. Consider the best parts of the campaign and infuse your own message and identity. Everything from their site, their profile and cover photos, their social media banners can serve as inspiration for your own branding.

Inbound techniques

Learn more about your competitor’s inbound marketing strategy. You can check how they are drawing in the visitors and convincing them to provide their contact information.

Are they offering anything in return? Are they providing an Ebook to download, a case study download, a free consultation/trial in exchange for their email address? Whatever your competitor’s techniques are, you can take inspiration from them and device your own competitive marketing strategies on your own.

Website traffic

It is crucial to know how much website traffic your competitors have gathered. This way, you can set a specific benchmark to base your own website traffic objectives. Having knowledge about their website traffic will highlight if there are things they are doing well.

Evaluating website traffic allows you to see what region or country the majority of their traffic is coming from. You will also know if the traffic is organic (found via search), direct (users have searched your URL) or referral (a visitor has been referred from another site).

Website backlinks

Link building is an essential component in a successful marketing campaign. Your competitors’ backlinks can help improve your own approach to guest blogging. There are numerous tools that can reveal your competitor’s content backlinks; this enables you to decide what content and outreach might work best for you.

When you have gained an idea of what sites are linking to you, you can create content that is better than theirs and help you reach out to the sites and tell them to link to your content instead.

Competitive Marketing: Advantages and Benefits

The competition allows the market to stay active and makes people pay more attention. By leafing through more offerings, the consumer is also encouraged the purchase mindset. Once the power to purchase goes into the hands of the consumers, then businesses are encouraged to enter the proper consumer mode of business. On that note presented below are some of the proper advantages of competitive marketing.

Cost advantage resulting from efficiency

There are a multitude of ways an organisation can improve its efficiency. Efficiency is maintained if inputs are decreased, holding outputs constant. Or, if outputs are elevated, holding inputs constant. Inputs can be lowered in multiple ways. Labour inputs can be minimised if employees are better trained so that the time invested in each individual output is reduced.

Again, reducing waste can lower the materials needed. If a strategy can be devised to decrease waste, it would elevate efficiency.

Product differentiation

Product differentiation is attained by presenting variations of the physical product. The ability to differentiate a product differs greatly depending on the specific product. There are some products that don’t involve too much differentiation.

And then there are some products which can be highly differentiated. Appliances, automobiles, restaurants, and even batteries can all be customised and highly differentiated to cater to various consumer needs.

Upgradation

Competitive marketing allows you to regularly upgrade your product and innovate so that you stay ahead of the competition. If there was no competition, Apple would not have been what it is today.

It would still be producing high-end laptops only. Because Steve jobs wished to get ahead of competition like Sony and others, he chose to innovate. So upgradation is a natural advantage of having market competition.

Adding more value

The benefit of having market competition is that organisations are always trying to add value to their product. They have the option to either elevate the quality of the product, or they can reduce the prices. In either of the cases, the products become more desirable to the consumer and they feel that it is a value for money product.

Productivity

Businesses ideally tend to be more efficient and productive when there is competition in the market. When you are aware that your competitor is developing strategies consistently, you optimise your own manufacturing and operations. This means that the consumer gets better customer service, optimised product, and at the same time, a management that listens to the customer. This is the greatest advantage of market competition.

Marketing Tools for Competitive Marketing Analysis

Using competitor analysis tools helps you find relevant information about the marketing strategies implemented by your competitor. You can also unveil the secrets to their success within your shared market. Some of the marketing tools to develop competitive marketing strategies are as follows.

Kompyte

Compare traffic, visitor behaviour, referrals, keywords and search rankings, paid ads, and site by site social metrics. Keep yourself updated with competitor emails. You can include competitors to track manually, or let Kompyte recommend them based on the keywords you are tracking.

SimilarWeb

The tool provides an overview of website traffic, social media, referrals, search traffic and keywords, display advertising, audience, and similar sites and apps. Prices are charged depending on what you want from the service.

Wappalyzer

Wappalyzer is a cross-platform utility tool to uncover the technologies that are utilised on different websites. In a layman’s terms, Wappalyzer serves as an add-on to your browser and can recognise the types of software running on a specific website. You can visit your competition’s websites and run a quick scan of what software they are using.

BuiltWith

Identified as a business intelligence and competitive analysis tool, BuiltWith offers profiles of websites, sales and business intelligence, lead generation, eCommerce data, and competitive analysis.

WooRank

WooRank is a digital marketing and SEO checker tool. It will scan a site and give you a detailed audit of its SEO. It also consists of a keyword tool that measures and tracks keyword rankings and SEO impact. Your competitors are added automatically, meaning you will gain insights into their marketing strategies, their objectives, and their priorities.

How to beat the cutthroat competition to run a successful business?

Whatever industry you are a part of, there will come a point when you have to make changes to your business plan to comply with the market shifts. Now it isn’t always convenient to keep your business competitive. But presented below are some ways that can greatly benefit your business in the long run.

Innovate to differentiate

Consumers are often willing to invest more when they feel that what they are receiving in return is more. Sometimes, these things can even be intangibles like how they feel while consuming your product.

The intangible value signifies the fun and the numerous possibilities of food available to the consumer just the way they like it.

Know your consumer

The biggest pitfall in business, specifically a new one, is not to study the market. When you don't know your prospective customers and their specific needs, you are dead on arrival. Now, while people have unlimited needs, most of the time they cannot afford to meet them.

Once you learn and find a gap in the needs of people that are not being fulfilled, all you are required to do is develop a business to mend this gap. This needs to be carried out in a way that your potential consumers can afford to invest.

Predict the Future

You don’t require a crystal ball to figure out (or at least try to anticipate) the future, but it does need you to put your thinking cap on. Having a clear long-term vision is hardly a secret nowadays. In 1903, when Henry Ford launched the Ford Motor Company, this pioneering entrepreneur was taking advantage of his business foresight by thinking years ahead of everyone else.

So, if you can keep yourself informed, and ahead of the curve, then your organisation will be far better equipped to compete in a global marketplace.

In conclusion,

Now that we have covered all the important aspects of market competition, you will find it easier to prepare your assignment on this topic. These insights will help you maintain absolute perfection while presenting your academic paper.

Gain valuable insights into marketing from MyAssignmenthelp.com

Have you been trying to figure your way around your assignment on marketing competition? Have you been trying in vain to understand the core concept of market competition? Well, not anymore, because MyAssignmenthelp.com can resolve your issue over your complicated assignment topic.

Our writers focus on every important step in order to produce a superior quality of academic paper. These experts carry out precise research and derive relevant resources. These writers ensure every information presented in the paper is organised in an appropriate order. They even emphasise on presenting accurate citation at the end of the assignment.

Our services are known for offering perfectly customised papers when you approach them. We always emphasise on preparing every task from scratch. We have also implemented stringent anti-plagiarism policy, which means you assignment delivered to you will be devoid of plagiarised content.

Our pricing structure is also quite affordable. So, you won’t have to shell out a hefty amount for availing our services. Additionally, you will get to enjoy several freebies. Those services include-