How to Measure and Benchmark Competitors in Digital Marketing

Understand Your Competitor Website Traffic and Share of Voice

In order to have a complete view of the digital activities your competitors are using to build awareness and drive sales, you have to understand both their website traffic and share of voice (SOV). Website traffic refers not only to the number of monthly visitors, but also the sources of that traffic such as search engines and social media. Share of voice refers to the number of times a brand was mentioned online in news articles or social media. Understanding the difference between and importance of website traffic and SOV is fundamental for having a complete picture of the digital landscape. If you only measure the website traffic of your competitors, you will only see the number of visitors that came from news articles and social media i.e. quantitative data. You will not see the content quality of the news articles or social media posts, but more importantly, you will miss out on the world of influencers and news articles which may not be driving traffic to competitor websites, but is helping them dominate the online SOV in order to keep their brands top-of-mind among customers. And vice versa, if you only focus on the social media activity of competitors, you will be blind to their organic and paid search strategies.

Website traffic and share of voice measure two different things. Website traffic measures activity of a specific website and the data is more quantitative. Share of voice measures activity outside of the website and the data is more qualitative. However, there is some overlap because some of the activity outside of the website, such as a popular post on Facebook, can drive traffic to the website, but now always.

Identify the Top 5 Online Traffic Leaders in Your Market

Before you begin investing a lot of time and energy into researching competitors, identify the top 5 online traffic leaders in your market — this is where you will find the most mature and interesting digital marketing strategies. In general, the market leaders within an industry are also the online traffic leaders because digital marketing is often times a key component in the marketing mix of successful companies. However, when you find a market leader is not also the online traffic leader — which can happen due to regulations within certain industries — skip to the next competitor with the biggest market share and online traffic. The easiest way to identify the top 5 online traffic leaders in a market is to ask someone, such as product manager, who should have this information. If this information is incomplete or unavailable, you will have to do a little keyword research before moving forward.

How to Identify the Top 5 Online Traffic Leaders by Keywords

When you don’t know who the online traffic leaders are because you don’t know who the market leaders or they are not the same, use keyword research tools to help you identify the biggest competitors in your market. There are many tools that can help you perform this research, but I will use SimilarWeb to illustrate examples. Keep in mind the process will be the same regardless of the tool you use.

1. Identify the top keywords you want to rank for. For example, if you are selling a shampoo that helps reduce or eliminate dandruff, one of the top keywords you will want to rank for is “dandruff.” However, because there are a lot of informational websites about dandruff that don’t sell products, you may want to narrow your keyword research to a phrase such as “dandruff shampoo.” You can also choose to focus on your active ingredient as a keyword such as “pyrithione zinc” in Head & Shoulders or “selenium sulfide” in Selson Blue. After you determine your most important keywords, you can begin identifying their top-ranking websites.

List of most popular keywords and phrases related to “dandruff.” Because you are looking for brand or product websites — as opposed to websites that just provide information about dandruff — it is better to focus on the keyword phrase “dandruff shampoo” which has the second-highest volume in this example.

2. Identify the top organic and paid search websites for your keywords. Looking at websites that pay to rank for specific keywords is the easiest way to identify your top competitors in a market. However, make sure not to include online marketplaces such as Amazon which are not direct competitors. Reviewing websites that rank organically for your keywords is equally important, but will require a little more work since you will want to filter out websites that provide keyword information but do not sell products.

List of top websites ranking organically for keyword “dandruff shampoo” in the U.S. within the last 12 months. Most of these websites are informational websites or online marketplaces with the exception of headandshoulders.com. Sort through this list until you identify the top five brand websites.

3. Identify the most-relevant top 5 online traffic leaders. Once you have a decent list of websites ranking for your keywords, you need to figure out the monthly visitors for each of the websites. This will allow you to identify the top 5 online traffic leaders in your market. Lastly, you will want to make sure the top 5 websites you have chosen are relevant for your competitive research. Again, you will want to exclude online marketplaces and websites that provide information but do not sell products.

List of top brand websites ranking for “dandruff shampoo” in order of monthly traffic volume. Although lorealparisusa.com and pgeveryday.com are the highest-ranking websites, they also sell products other than shampoo which require different digital marketing strategies. To have a better idea of what “shampoo” brands are doing online, it’s better to focus on more relevant websites such as pantene.com or herbalessences.com even though they have less traffic.

Compare the Monthly Visitors and Traffic Sources of Your Competitor Websites

Now that you have identified the top 5 online traffic leaders, you will be able to see the digital marketing strategies they use to grow market share. As previously mentioned, there are many tools that can help you with this research, but I will use SimilarWeb to illustrate some examples. Ideally, you should be able to see the traffic and sources of the top 5 competitors on one page. Below are some important factors you will want to pay attention to.

Who has the best quality traffic? It doesn’t matter how much traffic a brand drives to its website if visitors spend less than 10 seconds per session. Focus your research on websites with the highest-quality traffic.

If you notice a competitor with much higher visit duration or page visits such as aussie.com above, you should study their website to learn how they are able to engage with their website visitors more meaningfully.

Does traffic spike during specific times of the year? If a product has seasonality you will often see it in traffic to websites within the category. Use this information to help you determine the best times of the year to invest in advertising. You can choose to either compete with others during peak periods or invest during non-peak periods.

You may also be able to correlate peaks in traffic with marketing campaigns to better understand what works and what doesn’t work for competitors.

What are the most important sources of traffic? Identifying the online channels where market leaders drive traffic to their websites will help you understand where customers are becoming aware of or engaging with brands. Use this to allocate your digital marketing budget accordingly.

Just because market leaders aren’t driving traffic from channels such as paid search or social media doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. On the contrary, doing so could be a great way to build a competitive advantage. However, you shouldn’t ignore channels such as organic search that are important across your competitive set.

What is their paid-to-organic traffic ratio? If competitors are ignoring paid search, it’s a perfect opportunity to steal from their organic traffic. And vice versa, if competitors are investing heavily in paid search but ignoring organic traffic, it could be wise to invest in content that will help your website rank better on Google.

It’s also important to understand if market leaders are generating more branded or unbranded traffic.

What are their top organic and paid keywords? You need to know the specific keywords competitors are using if you want to build a counter-strategy. You may also discover other valuable keywords you were not previously aware of.

Make sure you focus on the keywords with the highest volume and greatest relevance to your own brand.

The answers to these questions will provide you and your organization with valuable information to help structure your own digital marketing strategy. However, this information will only provide you with half of the total picture. For a complete view of the digital marketing strategies of your competitors, you need to also look at their reach and SOV on social media and news articles.

Measure the Share of Voice and Reach of Your Competitors

Using the same set of competitors for website traffic, taking a look at where and how the brands are mentioned online can provide valuable additional insights into their digital marketing strategies. Visibility in this space is becoming increasingly important at a time when brands are being launched on Instagram and relying less on traditional websites. To get started, you will need some tools to help you out. A simple Google search for “online listening tools” will provide you with plenty of options. I will use Meltwater to help illustrate some examples.

How to Set Up Search Terms for Online Listening. To calculate an accurate online SOV of competitors, you first have to qualify the content you include in your calculation. For example, if you perform a simple search for online mentions of the term “head & shoulders,” you will find a lot of articles mentioning Head & Shoulders, but not all of them will provide insights about their digital marketing strategy.

Article talking about the share prices of Head & Shoulders. These articles do not provide insights about the digital marketing strategy of the brand and should be excluded from their share of voice. However, articles like these may be helpful if you are monitoring your own brand online.

Filter Out Irrelevant Keywords in Online Listening. To make sure you don’t include irrelevant articles in calculating the SOV of a brand, you need to filter out irrelevant keywords. In the case above, you want to exclude keywords such as “share price” until all your search results include articles that provide meaningful insights about the digital marketing strategy of the brand. This process can be tedious and time-consuming, but it’s valuable and necessary if you want to have an accurate SOV.

Article talking about a new line of products. These types of articles provide insights into the digital marketing strategy of the brand because they show where and how the brand is being discussed online.

How to Calculate Share of Voice and Online Reach

After you have properly filtered search results of the top 5 competitors for online news and social media mentions, you can calculate SOV and gather other interesting tidbits about your industry. Even when you already know which brand in your market occupies the greatest share of voice, it can be enlightening to quantify the buzz they are able to create online.

Dashboard showing the share of voice, monthly number of mentions, and potential reach of market leaders, respectively. NOTE: Data shown is used as an example and does not accurately reflect SOV of given brands.

As you can see in the example above, online listening tools will not only allow you to calculate the SOV of top competitors in your market, they can also demonstrate the seasonality of when brands are being talked about online and estimate the reach of the websites and social media accounts where the brands are mentioned.

Measure and Compare Number of Mentions vs. Potential Reach. It’s critical to look at both number of mentions and reach because a brand with 50 mentions in a month will appear more successful than a brand with only one mention, but if you can reach one million people with one mention, most people would argue it’s more valuable than 50 mentions with a reach of 50,000 people.

Conclusion: Improve Your Digital Marketing Strategy Using Competitor Benchmarks

Now that you have a more complete view of what your competitors are doing online, use this knowledge to improve your digital marketing strategy. There are several ways you can do this. You can choose to focus on the same keywords as your competitors or focus on longtail keywords that are less expensive and easier to rank for. You can choose to focus more on social media if you see that’s where customers are primarily engaging with market leaders or you can experiment with an email marketing strategy to build a more personal connection with customers — especially if you notice other brands are not leveraging this channel. Lastly, if you notice a lot of activity outside of competitor websites thanks to online listening tools, you can choose to sponsor articles on websites your customers frequently visit or you can invest in influencer marketing campaigns. Whatever you decide, make sure to use some of the tools described here to closely monitor your results and measure against your top competitors or market leaders to better understand the impact of your actions.