Elements of a Content Strategy: The Competitive Analysis

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If a content strategy isn’t rooted in research, then it’s just an ideas doc.

A content strategy shouldn’t reflect what I think. It must reflect what my client’s audience thinks and the areas of opportunity within their industry. 

Research is critical here. 

If you’re creating a content strategy, you’re conducting research. And if you’re conducting research, you’re likely looking at competitors to understand their approach to content. 

This is called a competitive analysis. It’s a heavyweight deliverable in the research stage of your strategy projects for clients… and it can be really fun to do, I promise! 

In this article, I’ll review what the competitive analysis deliverable is, what to include in your analysis, and how to conduct it. 

And if you’d like the full package - how to create all elements of a content strategy - then my email course is the place for you.

THIS ARTICLE IN A SNAPSHOT

TOPIC

The competitive analysis deliverable.

TL;DR

My toolkits are your “content strategy in a box.” Download them for templates of each deliverable I include in my content strategies. To accompany my toolkits, I’m occasionally sharing exactly how I create each deliverable. If you don’t want my toolkit, you’ll still learn how to create the competitive analysis deliverable in this article. I promise!

TOP RESOURCE

If you want to skip the process of building deliverables yourself, then check out my toolkits here.

WHAT IS A COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS FOR A CONTENT STRATEGY?

Also called a marketplace scan, a competitive analysis looks at (you guessed it!) a few competitors’ content and its strengths and weaknesses. It can also look at inspirational players in the space, even if they’re not direct competitors. In doing this analysis, you can highlight the white space your content can fill — or, your unique opportunity within content.

A competitive analysis should answer questions like:

  • What types of content do they create? 

  • What do they have to say? 

  • What is unique about their content? 

  • What could we do better?

WHAT I INCLUDE IN MY CONTENT STRATEGY

I include three general pieces of information: 

  1. My approach

  2. A scan of each competitor’s content

  3. My assessment of each competitor’s content

My approach

My client needs to understand how I approached my analysis, so that they can trust its results. 

I open with contextual information on:

  • The tools I used, such as ahrefs or SEM Rush, BuzzSumo, or social listening tools.

  • The scope of the analysis. For example, did I just look at a competitor’s blog? Or website and blog? Or ALL their content?

A scan of each competitor’s content

My client needs to understand, in a snapshot, what content looks like at each competitor. 

I include brief information on:

  • The content’s primary value proposition

  • Target audience

  • Prioritized topics

  • Prioritized formats

  • Links to 3-5 exemplary pieces of content, or their best-performing content if tools can provide that information

  • Information on audience size, if tools can provide that information

  • Screenshots of examples on resulting pages

Here’s an example of an overview slide: 

My assessment of each competitor’s content

For each competitor, I outline:

  • Strengths: What stands out to me as exemplary?

  • Weaknesses: What stands out to me as sub-par?

Here’s an example of the strengths and weaknesses in a slide. 

Sometimes, I follow the SWOT method: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. 

In those cases, I also include:

  • Opportunities: What ideas do I have about where our company could win “over” the competitor?

  • Threats: What does the competitor do so well that competing would be a battle?

HOW TO CONDUCT A COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

  1. Learn who to look at. Ask your clients, but also ask their customers and prospective customers. Or at the least, learn who customers most often switch from or switch to.

  2. Spend time just exploring. Turn on your creative brain. Look at their websites. Read their content. Get inspired and excited by the cool things they do. Most importantly, get familiar with how they approach content. 

  3. Analyze their successes. Use a tool like AHREFs to understand their approach to search. Audit their social media to see how people engage with their content. 

  4. Consolidate your findings. 

    1. Your overview information

    2. Screenshots

    3. Strengths

    4. Weaknesses

  5. Make your document pretty. I try not to worry about formatting until all the information is in there. Otherwise, it feels like editing as I write — not super efficient. 

HOW I PRESENT MY COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

I present the information twice:

  1. I present the analysis via a deck. It forces me to keep information short and include visuals. You could also:

    1. Use a Google Doc with the same information

    2. Simply use a folder of images and verbalize your findings, if you’d like to lean casual (I don’t recommend this unless you’re doing a hyper-short ASAP project)

  2. I revisit my top learnings in an insights presentation later on. My insights include learnings for the competitive analysis, as well as other research I conducted. It’s where I consolidate and revisit the top takeaways, since the research stage can be a data dump.

And remember: If you’d rather not build your competitive analysis process from scratch, simply download my toolkits and use my template.

INCLUDING RESEARCH AS A DELIVERABLE: STILL NEED CONVINCING?

As an independent consultant, I’ve worked with dozens of companies on their approach to content. My first year of consulting, I didn’t list research as a client deliverable in my proposals. I just pitched a content strategy and editorial calendar. 

But here’s the thing: I still did the research to present clients with an A+ strategy. I just wasn’t presenting them with the findings… or pricing against the work. 

I started including research deliverables, such as a competitive analysis, in my strategy projects. It’s helped me raise my prices and increase my client’s trust in my — they see the research that backs the strategy we set. 

Beyond a competitive analysis, what other research deliverables should I offer?

There are so many types of other research deliverables you can include in your content strategy. Here’s a list of just the ones I’ve turned to:

  • Content audit of all existing content and its strengths and weaknesses

  • Content analysis of your existing content’s performance

  • Audience analysis of your audience’s demonstrated interests and pain points on search, in forums, in questions to your customer support team, etc

  • Customer interviews to learn their interests and pain points

  • Persona development of your target audience

  • Team workshop uncovering what your client has to say

But these three are my tried-and-true research deliverables I offer.

  1. The competitive analysis we’ve covered in this piece

  2. Content audit of all existing and its strengths and weaknesses

  3. Team workshop uncovering what your client has to say 

If you’d like to learn more about how I build and deliver my research to clients, subscribe to my email course on building content strategies.