Boost Marketing Impact with Competitive Benchmarking

Challenge

Benchmarking is more than just tracking numbers.

When you benchmark, you evaluate your business’s performance, strategies, and outcomes against your competitors or industry leaders.

Benchmarking allows you to identify gaps, set realistic performance goals, and develop actionable strategies for improving your market position.

Ready to benchmark against competitors and market trends?

Use this step-by-step guide to position yourself among top competitors, assess market trends and growth dynamics, optimize marketing strategies, and gain market share.

Step 1: Start with Market Explorer to Identify Top Competitors

Start with Market Explorer to instantly identify the top competitors in your market.

Right from the start, the Market Summary shows the size, traffic, and consolidation of your market. You can find the top three players and their market shares on the left.

Use this data to compare your current market share to these top competitors. This will help you better understand your market positioning and potential gaps.

Step 2: Analyze Competitor Growth Using the Growth Quadrant

Scroll to the Growth Quadrant. The quadrant’s clear visuals help you quickly determine which competitors have seen the most growth in specific traffic channels.

Note the trends of all competitors. If one or two competitors trend upward, it is likely because of their successful marketing strategies. If all competitors show similar growth rates, their success may be attributed to larger market forces or customer preferences.

Hover over the dot next to a competitor’s domain to get details on their growth. Jot down this info as you build your own growth goals.

Then, filter by channel to benchmark specific campaigns.

Leverage this data to:

• Pinpoint successful strategies among your competitors
• Select high-performing channels in your market
• Optimize strategies across those channels
• Attribute growth and determine goals

Step 3: Compare Competitors in Domain vs. Market Dynamics

Continue down in the Market Explorer Overview report until you find the Domain vs Market Dynamics section.

This section compares each competitor against the market at large. Note when a competitor outperforms or underperforms the market average.

In this example, you’ll see in the image below that booking.com beats the market average with direct traffic but falls short of the market with organic search traffic. This suggests strong brand awareness, but less focus on their SEO strategy.

Use Domain vs. Market Analytics metrics to benchmark your status against the competition and the market as a whole.

Step 4: Uncover Key Metrics in Traffic Analytics for Actionable Insights

Next, go to the left navigation bar and select Traffic Analytics to find ways your organization can outperform the market average and gain market share. With this tool, you can look under the hood of your competitors’ websites to find immediate, actionable insights.

Enter the competitors’ domains to detect shifts in metrics like visits, conversion rates, bounce rates, and other user behavior indicators.

Take this data to benchmark your user behavior metrics over the same period.

Go through all the columns to unearth where competitors are doing well and where they might be vulnerable.

For example, if a competitor's page views per visit increase while their conversion rate drops, it suggests visitors aren’t finding what they need. If, however, bounce rates are rising across the board, it could indicate a trend with customers in general.

By comparing these metrics, pinpoint where your organization performs well or needs improvement.

Then, take these findings to capitalize on competitors’ vulnerabilities and make traction on their successes.

Step 5: Understand Traffic Flows with the Traffic Journey Graph

Next, check the Traffic Journey widget to understand how traffic flows to and from your competitors' domains. On the left, you’ll see the Top Sources, and on the right, the Top Destinations.

The data here can help you understand:

Referral Channels: Which sites and platforms are driving the most traffic to your competitors, so you can identify partnership or advertising opportunities.

Audience Behavior: How visitors navigate away from your competitors’ sites, giving you insights into audience preferences and potential content gaps to fill.

Traffic Opportunities: Emerging traffic channels or unexpected referrers that you can target to capture additional market share or expand your reach.

Competitor Strategies: How effectively your competitors use specific traffic channels, helping you benchmark your own efforts and optimize accordingly.

Hover over individual domains to uncover their strengths, weaknesses, and key benchmarking metrics.

For example, 45% of tripadvisor.com’s traffic comes from google.com, but 10% flows back, indicating visitors may not be finding what they need. With this information, you can gauge your traffic flow, and work to fill content gaps competitors may be overlooking.

Step 6: Identify High-Traffic Content with the Top Pages Report

Finally, go to the Top Pages report. Here, you’ll gain insights into the topics, products, and services audiences flock to most.

Filter by channel to spot which drove the most traffic to competitors’ top pages.

Use Google Analytics to get your traffic numbers. Then, compare your findings to these competitor results and:

• Find new content opportunities.
• Maximize your content promotion strategies.
• Exceed your inbound KPIs.
• Take away competitors’ market share!