The horticulture world is dense with avenues for marketing, revenue, and possibilities. Many other companies are trying to do the exact same thing as you. For this reason, trying to differentiate yourself from the competition can be intimidating–you may not even know where to start.
How do you describe what you do differently? Can you?
After overcoming the initial feeling of dread, knowing your business competition can be advantageous (if you can leverage their shortcomings). Competitive analysis offers insight into how you can potentially commandeer their customer base or use the gaps in their models to enhance your footprint.
Finding out as much as you can about your competitors provides ample opportunity to set yourself apart from the rest of the field–and continue to establish your brand as the most trustworthy one in the industry.
What Is a Competitor Analysis?
Conducting a competitor analysis can be vital as you expand your brand and reach with content marketing.
Essentially, you want to gain as much knowledge as possible about the other players in the field–their marketing strategies, customer base, strengths, and weaknesses. This information can guide you in thoughtful decision-making as you account for your goals and future practices.
Here are a few ways to conduct a competitive analysis:
- Market research: Market research encompasses a vast array of analytic data, from price points to customer feedback. Explore their website or social media to see how they interact with customers, read their Google reviews, and check out their current product catalog. This way, you can gauge some of their strengths and weaknesses.
- Use competitor analysis tools: Sometimes, investing in analytic tools like Ahrefs, Moz, or Semrush can help identify gaps in your competitors’ customer reach. For example, say their blog posts about soil perform poorly on search engines. Here, you can exploit their shortcomings by beefing up your soil-based marketing efforts.
- Hire a professional: Enlisting the help of an SEO, industry dynamics, or analysis expert can be pivotal when gathering competitor data. You may not have the time or resources to conduct research yourself–these professionals handle the legwork so you can focus on finding solutions.
- Attend trade fairs: One way to learn from your competitors is to interact with them directly. Pay close attention during their presentations–look for sneak peeks into their plans for expansion.
- Use the SWOT method: Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats–these elements show you what your competitors do well, where they fall short, areas where you can beat them, and what external factors could harm your business (e.g., supply chain issues, new market regulations, etc.).
Why Understanding Competition is Essential in Business
You know the age-old saying, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”
Of course, things aren’t that serious in the horticulture industry. Still, approaching your market with this mindset can ultimately set you apart, boost engagement, and foster brand loyalty.
The marketing world is constantly evolving. AI is in the spotlight, social media trumps print, and consumers are gravitating to short-form content.
While you can’t necessarily predict such trends or ensure customer needs, you can use your surroundings (your competition) to postulate an idea of the future landscape.
Here are six reasons why knowing your competition in your content marketing game is important:
1. Market Opportunities
Competitive analysis opens the door to new market opportunities. Studying your competitors’ offerings and customer feedback can help you determine the holes in their current strategy.
Let’s say you sell automated water irrigation systems to large greenhouses. Your business is doing relatively well, but you know you could expand your catalog–you just don’t know the direction to move toward.
Instead of winging it and choosing a new product line at random, you check out the local garden tool supplier down the road. You see they currently have a very similar client and product base, but online reviews show customers are frustrated with their lack of sprinkler systems. Applying this data to your marketing approach can rack in business you may have otherwise lost.
Similarly, examine the products customers dislike (i.e., faulty drip irrigation systems) and locate a solution that could better meet their needs.
2. Differentiating Your Brand
Monitoring your competitors’ advances, new product launches, or other innovations can help you identify areas in which you could improve. Having an outside perspective on your business means you can catch your own weaknesses you may have overlooked.
From there, you can develop your brand to outdo your competitors. For instance, incorporating unique features to your product or offering add-on services could differentiate you from the pack, thus increasing your market reach.
3. Planning for Potential Risks
Watch out for yourself by keeping tabs on your competitors’ mistakes. You can catch new trends, technologies, or market shifts that could impact your business sooner rather than later, potentially sparing you from significant revenue or customer losses.
Start by analyzing their past and current products or services. What worked for them? What left them in the hole? Knowing the exact steps that led to failure means you can avoid taking the same missteps in your marketing and business strategy.
4. Fill the Gaps in Their Business Models
Like market opportunities, competitive analysis can help you hone into untapped territory.
Perhaps similar businesses fail to keep up with the latest social media trends, thus missing out on thousands of potential customers. Or, maybe they focus too heavily on Instagram and Facebook while the majority of their client base prefers engaging with podcasts.
Spend time delving into their practices to pinpoint where you could fill the gap in their strategy. Explore different media (whether blog posts, ebooks, or even print) to gain an edge over your business competitors.
5. Identify Customer Needs & Build Relationships
The customer is always right…right?
In some ways, no. In this way, yes!
Knowing how consumers respond to your competition can indicate whether or not they meet current demands. How is their customer service team? Do they even have one? How can your business better suit customer expectations?
Focus on building a reputation with your current customers and work toward engaging your competitors’ audience, too. Be considerate, offer a direct line to support (not a robot), and show clients how you plan to serve them (and why giving you their business is better than the alternative).
6. Identify New Marketing Tools
Last but certainly not least–use competitor analysis to explore new marketing tools.
As we touched on briefly above, AI is taking center stage in the content and marketing industry. With new innovations unraveling daily, you can easily incorporate advanced technology into your business strategy.
Better yet, regularly monitoring how your competitors use these technologies themselves saves you from needing to experiment. How do people react to their AI chatbots? What about their AI-generated email campaigns?
You should also examine how your competitors produce other forms of content. Do they use a specific website for image creation? Is their method receiving better results than your current creative endeavors?
Eventually, you’ll have a list of services that work best for developing your brand, audience, and future success–all while outrunning the competition.
Staying Ahead of Your Business Competitors
The world of business can be cut-throat, with thousands of companies fighting for the same spot.
Don’t fret! Simple planning can save you time, energy, and money as you work toward achieving a strong foundation as a business entity.
Focus on learning from your competitors while expanding on their weaknesses. But, don’t forget to fix your own missteps in the process. Strive for innovation, not conformity!
Here are a few extra tips to keep a leg up over your competitors
- Stick out from the crowd: Brands don’t become successful by blending in with the background. Differentiate yourself from your competitors in some way–whether your outstanding customer service, extensive product line, or user-generated content campaigns.
- Remember, your customers are king: We’ll say it again–honor your customers’ needs and values. Your business cannot thrive without them, so prioritize their feedback.
- Stay on top of trends: Regularly check for social media or search engine trends. What regulatory changes are occurring in your industry? What new technologies are turning heads? Analyzing the impact of these events can provide additional leverage over competitors.
- Keep monitoring your competitors: Stay consistent! Don’t let your efforts fall to the wayside. Consider setting up a regular report of your competitors’ campaigns, product releases, or prices.
- Focus on engagement: In the end, customer engagement is what drives longevity as a business. Find ways to get them involved through social media, email marketing, or other incentives.
