Online reputation? Know the numbers to make right choices.

This is why you should analyze your online reputation and that of your competitors.

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One of the most enlightened entrepreneurs in history, Henry Ford, once uttered these words:

“The two most important things do not appear on an enterprise’s balance sheet: its reputation and its people.”

Those of us who deal with managers, entrepreneurs, and freelancers of all ages and from all sectors every day know that it is women and men who make the difference. With their skills, expertise and ideas.

But this will be discussed more fully in future articles. This time let’s focus on reputation.

Hernry Ford was right. Perfectly right.

Yesterday as well as today.

And do you know why?

Because today (even more than in the past) more than 90 percent of your company’s value comes from the trust your customers and the market have in you. Simply put, by your reputation. Not surprisingly, today another business guru like Jeff Bezos  reiterated the concept by saying:

“Your brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room.”

An obvious reference to personal brand, but of course it is also extendable to corporate reputation

If our reputation precedes us (and believe me, in the age of web and social this is tremendously true, for better or worse) we must make sure that crises or unforeseen events do not compromise it. Data is an outstanding tool to accomplish this because it is the best means to monitor our online reputation while preventing a blaze from turning into an untamable fire.

Of course, monitoring mentions of our products/services and our brand through online data is the easiest way to be in full control of our online reputation. However, that is not the only thing you can do. Analyzing the competition is also useful for improving online reputation.

And in the next few lines we will see how and why…

Competitor analysis allows companies to use any relevant information about their competitors to their advantage, so they can stand out among the thousands of brands that “ostensibly” sell the same products or services.

One of the most revolutionary aspects in the era of online big data is that everything you are looking for is already online, public on the Web. It is all about intercepting it, deciphering it and processing it to turn the information it contains into operational or strategic actions. That is why the work of market analysis companies such as Central Marketing Intelligence, including in the area of competitive reputation analysis, is increasingly in demand.

Competitive analysis: definition and modalities.

Competitor analysis, competitor analysis, competitor analysis or competitive analysis. There are many terms to define that process aimed at:

• Identify the identity of key competitors
• Verify the marketing and business strategies they have adopted
• analyze winning strategies and mistakes
• know their online reputation

If we have talked before about the usefulness of studying competitors and their strategies to outline their merits and flaws, this time let’s focus on the last item on this list: knowing their online reputation.

Are you wondering how you can use competitor analysis to accomplish this?

Competitor analysis lets you know where your competitors stand in the market.

A company should always know the positioning of competitors in the market.

Capturing Big Data online allows us to provide you with important information in this regard, such as the following (and many more):

• products and services
• marketing strategies
• investment in online advertising
• results obtained from their websites
• Reputation on social media, online news outlets, and review sites
• strengths and weaknesses
• target customers
• price positioning strategies

You can use this and other data to compare with your brand, to study and adopt more effective strategies, and to clearly distance yourself from your competitors. In addition, you can analyze the mistakes of competitors… so you don’t make them yourself!

Analyze the competition so as not to undermine your online reputation.

Your company’s path is studded with traps and potential mistakes that could undermine the viability and finances of any brand, even the most established ones.

How to avoid putting your foot down? Simple: by analyzing the mistakes made by companies in your own industry, thus competing companies.

A tangible example is that of PPC campaigns. By analyzing the keywords your competitors are targeting, you can see which ones really bring in traffic and which ones can be overlooked.

This strategy allows you to use the budget devoted to paid ads wisely and save thousands.

Improve your content marketing strategy and web reputation through effective competitive analysis.

Studying your competitors’ web content, such as blog articles, social media posts, landing pages, and more, allows you to understand what online content works well and how often it is published.

What can you do with this information?

Plan a content marketing strategy that is more effective than that adopted by competitors and also outperforms competitors in terms of visibility and search engine rankings.

In this regard, do not forget the keyword study.

Study the competition to improve your site’s organic ranking? You can!

You probably know how critical organic search engine placement is for your brand.

By working on Search Engine Positioning to the best of your ability, your business gains in terms of visibility on Google, reputation, customer trust, and, of course, in terms of revenue.

Shall we also talk about the savings on Pay Per Click campaigns?

You certainly don’t need to, since you’ve probably already been told that gaining top positions on SERPs also allows you to invest less on paid ads.

Competitor analysis also helps you in this respect, because it helps you understand which keywords give your competitors more visibility in organic search results.

You can then use this information to analyze keywords, keep the most important ones in mind, and work on them in terms of SEO and ranking.

Competitive analysis, SEO and reputation: not just keywords.

Knowing the backlink profile of your competitor companies can be really beneficial to your business. Thanks to competitor analysis you can:

• Find out where the backlinks from your competitors’ sites are coming from, taking into account the most relevant ones
• Monitor competitor backlink profile by checking when competitor sites get new inbound links with good relevance from SEO point of view

Awareness of your competitors’ backlink profile allows you to adopt the strategies and best practices useful in routing your competition in organic search results.

So think about being able to know how your competitors get traffic to their website even beyond Google. Today it is possible thanks to Big Data and the method developed by us at Central Marketing Intelligence!

You can get the full picture of how many users are visiting your competitors’ sites–and more importantly, how they are doing it:

• Through email marketing activities and newsletters
• Through social media activities
• Through external partnerships that bring traffic to their site
• thanks to activities carried out offline that increased their visibility.

This knowledge allows you to find out what strategies are working in your industry and to evaluate next steps to intercept the same target customer.

Optimize your strategies to succeed-this is the core of effective competitive analysis.

Competitor analysis allows you to study strategies, set goals carefully and consciously, and improve your position in the market. Today we are increasingly talking about the Reputation Economy, in fact reputation is a value, something that can be monetized.

Do you want to monetize it?

We at CMI can help you do this by leveraging data and competitive intelligence to enable you to know and accurately understand the online reputation of your competitors and your company allowing you to gain more  and enhance the success of your brand and products/services in the marketplace.

Feel free to contact us for more information regarding CMI’s signature competitive analysis.