How much does competitor analysis cost as part of marketing strategy development?

You can't build a successful business without developing a marketing strategy, because every company's business activity rests on one foundation — sound marketing. Leaving out this key component can lead to fatal mistakes in the direction the company takes.

What is a marketing strategy?

It is a short-term (1 year) or long-term (up to 25 years) plan for the company's future development, covering the corporate and commercial goals that will make the business successful.

A marketing strategy shapes the company's position in its industry and outlines how to reach the planned results. It sets the company's direction of development without step-by-step detail, and it includes market research to understand the market's needs and your own prospects in it.           

1. What does a marketing strategy include?

A marketing strategy includes the following key parts:

• identifying the market segments that suit the company best;

• singling out the set of priority elements of the company's strategy, such as producing or selling certain goods, advertising and pricing policy, sales promotion, etc.;

• setting the level of marketing spend needed to carry out the chosen strategy.

2. Is a strategy worth the money?

Marketing communications are essentially investment operations aimed at growing the company's capital by investing in strategic directions that are promising for the business, instead of in financial flows.

An effective, well-thought-out strategy pays back many times over, so putting money into developing a marketing communications program — that's a very sensible use of capital.

3.   Target audience (TA) analysis

To avoid wasting money, you need to analyze your target audience — define the market segment and the consumers of your products/services. To do that, find out who is interested in your offers and why customers choose your products in particular.

A marketing strategy helps you understand what consumers expect and answers the following questions:

• the state and needs of the market;

• assessment of the company's capabilities and competitiveness;

• competitor analysis;

• choosing target market segments by studying consumer expectations and preferences;

• defining monitoring tools;

• economic assessment of the developed strategy.

4. How much does competitor analysis cost and how do we do it?

Healthy competition — that's the key to market growth and a successful business. Competing firms offer similar products and can draw your customers' attention to themselves. That is exactly why competitor analysis deserves close attention.

The cost of this service is quite hard to estimate in advance, because the price has to take into account both the specifics of the business and the directions of its future development.

MMIX.ua starts competitor analysis by building a full list of competitors, using the semantic core for this. We enter the keywords into the search engine, specify the region and get a list of links in the results.

Having picked out all the firms doing similar work, we rate them against specific criteria that matter to our target audience. Each criterion is scored separately and the points are added up.

These criteria include:

   a.   Marketing features of competitor websites

It makes sense to adopt competitors' successful marketing moves, since their good solutions can also work well for attracting your TA. Pick such features to fit your company's specifics, for example:

• help with choosing the right size when selling clothes or shoes;

• a purchase cost calculator that includes delivery on a sales website;

• a section with permits and qualification certificates — a great recommendation for a company;

   b.   Evaluating competitors' ad campaigns

lets you assess competitors' strengths and weaknesses by studying their special offers, advantages and advertising mistakes, so you can avoid those mistakes in your own business;

 c.   Competitor traffic analysis

To analyze competitors' traffic we use SimilarWeb — after signing up you can use it free for 7 days. Traffic estimates give only approximate results, yet they still help you see which promotion channels competitors use.

5. Traffic forecast

To invest your marketing money wisely, estimate the approximate spend on each promotion channel. Base this on statistics from dedicated end-to-end analytics services or other analytical sources

A traffic forecast is built on research data and specialists' hands-on experience. Even the most accurate forecast leaves some margin of error, yet it helps you make the right call on which channel will be more effective.

6.  Promotion channels and which of them suit your company

To promote a resource as effectively as possible, you need to pick the channels that work best for your particular business. Alongside traditional channels, these can include less conventional ones — aggregator sites such as Avito.

MMIX.ua web analytics specialists will professionally assess how effective the channels in use are and how strongly they reach your TA. Based on the research, we help the client make the right decision.

7. Page prototyping when the client who ordered a marketing strategy has no website or web analytics

When a client orders a marketing strategy but has no website, our web analysts prepare a website mockup and make it as convenient as possible, based on an analysis of consumer needs, competitors' websites and popular trends in the chosen market segment.

Here, ease of management and use matters more than good looks. Each block should sit in the place a specialist has defined for it and ensure that additional elements are used sensibly.

Conclusions

So we have seen how important and necessary an effective marketing strategy is, and that the lack of one can seriously hurt a business. For a more precise estimate of the cost, contact MMIX.ua — our web analysts will be glad to help you professionally. 

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