In the current online marketing landscape, it’s not enough to rely on channel-specific intelligence to run a single-channel activity such as PPC advertising, or solely SEO techniques. This is where competitor analysis can become the key source of market and competitive intelligence. In this presentation, Aaron Dicks, Managing Director of Impression, shares how his agency uses competitive intelligence data to inform clients of holistic competitor analysis. These slides were presented at the SEMrush webinar "How to Use Competitor Analysis for Your Marketing Strategy". Video replay is available at https://www.semrush.com/webinars/how-to-use-competitor-analysis-for-your-marketing-strategies/

1. How to use
competitive
analysis for your
marketing strategy

2. About me
● Education background in IT & Computing
● Studied Management & Marketing at University
● Started working part time in SEO - merging marketing and web
development (a hobby) together
● Some in-house roles, and a little digital marketing contracting
● Co-founded Impression in November 2012 - 8 years ago
● Since then I’ve worked across all aspects of digital marketing
Co-founder and Managing Director, Impression

3. Agenda An introduction to Impression
Defining digital strategy
Strategy research - insights
Importance of a holistic view on your market
How we use SEMRush & toolset overview
Summary

4. A little introduction to
Impression
And how this strategy
conversation has come
about

5. Founded in November 2012, Impression has
grown to be one of the UK’s premier agencies,
working with brands across the globe to drive
higher returns on their digital marketing
investments.
Digital Growth Specialists.

6. What we do
SEO Paid Media Digital PR Analytics
We help businesses make more money online
through strategic digital marketing. We work
across paid, owned and earned media channels,
and tie this together with our strategy consulting.
CRO

7. Our Clients & Awards AWARDS
RAR Digital
Awards
WINNER
UK Search
Awards
WINNER
European
Search Awards
WINNER
The DRUM
recommended
WINNER

8. United Kingdom
United States Australasia
Europe
Where are
our clients
based?

9. How this has
changed over time
● Client size - now include household names
● Multi-service clients
● Work with Digital Directors and seniors
● Multi-channel reporting has increased
● More “insights”
● We’ve evolved our offer over time
● We’re evolving into a strategic partner

10. What is digital strategy?

11. “Strategy”
The direction and scope of
the marketing activity to
reach the end vision

12. ● Wider team buy-in and input
● Competitor activity
● Top level channel considerations
● External influences (use PESTLE tool)
Often, big investments, step changes or “pivots” are required to stay competitive - these pivots are
components of a good strategy!
Strategy grows long term value
It’s not just a “plan”!
Components of a good strategy?

13. ● The day-to-day, always-on marketing activity
● Channel work, and overcoming most channel challenges
● Working towards and hitting channel targets
● It’s the practical execution of the marketing strategy
A marketing plan

14. ● You may not have full control of strategy
● Now your objectives
○ SMART or OKR formats ideally
● You can influence
○ Channels
○ Formats
○ Budgets
● The right person, the right creative, at the right time
Translating strategy
to digital marketing
Graphic credit: https://www.perdoo.com/resources/okr-vs-smart-goals/
Objective +
Key Results
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Relevant
Time-bound

15. Strategy
research
Where do the insights come from?

16. Available sources of information
● Google Trends (& Insights Finder)
● Google and Microsoft Ads
● Facebook & Facebook Ads Library
● Moat.com Ad Search
● SEO tools
● PPC tools
… And many more
Many free and paid sources

17. ● It’s hard to come by accurate whole
market data
● Early in our research we found a thing
called “clickstream data”
● This gives us data with a confidence
signal so we know its assumed
accuracy level
Multi-channel data?

18. Why all-channel insights are important
● Avoid competing per-channel with a competitor
● Explore formats used across marketing campaigns
● Look for cross-channel campaigns
● Estimate budgets
● Understand your cohort market size
● Understand the power of ‘brand’ on direct and search traffic mediums
● Establish affiliate, display publisher and PR effectiveness among competitors

19. A brief word on third
party data
STOP!
Clickstream isn’t direct measurement
First party, direct measurement will never
equal third party data assumptions

20. Getting the
whole picture
The importance of a holistic view - an
example

21. Getting the whole
picture
Imagine a scenario where your search
ads performance is great
● Impression share is very high
● ROAS is looking great overall
● Costs are reasonable and within acceptable
range

22. Using the growth quadrant, gain a comprehensive
understanding of your competitor landscape.
View both ingrained market leaders and movers and
shakers
Identify your core rivals who own the largest market
share
Getting the whole
picture
Are you missing a trick?
1
2
3

23. Navigate down to the traffic generation
strategy segment
Compare the traffic mix of your website and the
market, are they getting a larger % of organic or
referral traffic whilst you’re paying for yours?
Getting the whole
picture
Are you missing a trick?
1
2

24. How we use
SEMrush
Typical challenges we use SEMRush
to help us solve

25. How do we find
digital
competitors?
SEMrush enables you to find both broader
industry AND organic competitors
Either use it to assess the wider space or
hone in on specific organic competition in
particular regions and timeframes
1
2

26. Due Diligence
Ensuring we can help

27. Which channels send my
competition traffic?
Benchmarking - first navigate to the benchmarking tab
Traffic Generation Strategy - see a breakdown of channels used
by specific competitors
Social Media Distribution Strategy - also see a breakdown of
platforms competitors are focusing on
1
2
3
Before, we showed you how to benchmark
against your market as a whole, here’s how we’d
benchmark your use of different channels:

28. How much traffic do
channels actually
generate?

29. How do we enter an
overcrowded
market?

30. What other
markets do my
competitors
operate in?

31. Following from
identifying new
markets, what growth
opportunity is there?

32. How can we reach this
new audience?
If you’ve just identified a new audience, how can
you reach them when your competitors are
dominating the space?

33. Reporting
Tracking Growth
How market share changes over time.
Longer term impact of brand work.
Understand impact of channel activity on
overall search or direct traffic

34. Looking to
the future

35. A word on
measurement and
the future
● Cookie-less browsers
● Consumer privacy laws
● Google Analytics 4
● Third party measurement could become
more popular
Image credits: https://blog.ad-juster.com/

36. So in
summary
Using competitive analysis for
marketing strategy

37. So - in summary
● There are a lot of free sources of data out there
● Some great tools to make things easier
● Strategy is only strategy if you’re thinking broadly. Pivot!
● Consider external impacts
● Channel selection, right creative at the right time
● SEMRush’s CI module is a great help for a variety of use cases

38. hello@impression.co.uk Fothergill House, 16 King Street
Nottingham, NG1 2AS
01158 242 212
Thank you