We hate to say it but your product isn’t unique.
Competition is an inevitable part of ecommerce. Even Apple has competition and you most likely have them, too (If not, congratulations because you’ve cornered your market).
On the one hand, competition is healthy. On the other, it impacts sales and customer loyalty.
You need to make sure you differentiate your offering to appeal to your target audience.
To beat your competitors, you have to get to know them and know them well but you can’t do that if you don’t know who they are. The first step is to research and find out what brands your audience is scoping out or buying from.
If you don’t know where to start with competitor analysis, you’ve landed on the right article.
In the following sections, we’ll discuss the different ways you can research who your competitors are, no matter what industry you’re in or how big your ecommerce business is.
How to Identify Your Ecommerce Competitors
Why do you need competitor analysis in ecommerce?
How to find your ecommerce competitors
- Ask yourself who fulfills the same need as you or shares your target audience
- Search on Google and Amazon
- Look at review sites
- Ask customers
- Go on social media
- Check industry rankings
- Use automated tools like Panoramata
Why do you need competitor analysis in ecommerce?
Competitor analysis is a vital part of running a healthy business. It’s never too early to start.
You need to keep up with trends, see what your competitors are doing better, and innovate accordingly. Here are the benefits of competitor analysis:
- It helps you differentiate your brand and emphasize your unique selling proposition
- It lets you find out why your competitors are doing well or doing poorly
- It refines your product and marketing strategy
- It lets you work on your weaknesses and amplify your strengths.
- It helps you spot opportunities in advance so you can exploit them
- It lets you know which channels your competitors are focused on so you can also pay attention to those channels.
- It helps you prepare a realistic marketing budget
How to find your ecommerce competitors
Now, we’ll go into the nitty gritty of finding your ecommerce competitors.
There are several ways to do this. It depends on what fits your brand, preferences, and industry best. Let’s break down the different methods.
Ask yourself who fulfills the same need as you or shares your target audience
You may already know who you’re up against so this first step is to identify the obvious competition.
This can be ecommerce brands that offer the same product as you or share your target audience.
Note that you don’t have to just identify direct competitors. Other ones to remember are those who sell the same product but have a different target audience or those who sell a similar product at a different price.
If it applies to you, you can even ask your employees. They can be a source of great information about competitors. You can send a survey or ask them directly.
Search on Google and Amazon
This may be obvious but when finding competitors, Google is your friend.
Look up keywords your potential customers use when looking for a solution or product like yours. Try different keyword combinations, too.
The top results and their corresponding ads will point you to your direct competitors. Their ranking on the search results will also tell you how much traffic they receive.
Aside from that, you can do the same thing on Amazon and use relevant keywords to find businesses similar to yours.
Look at review sites
Websites like G2 and Capterra are trusted sources for competitor products. They recommend alternatives for each product listed on their database.
Ask customers
Your customers are a reliable source of information because they make up your target audience and therefore, explored different options before becoming a customer. Their behavior and buying habits will give you insight into where your competitors are.
You can ask your customers what brands they were considering before they bought from you and what places they go to online when looking for products like yours.
Go on social media
A fail-proof way to find competitors is to look on social media. People spend more time on social media than anywhere else online so you have lots of content at your disposal.
Treat social media like Google or Amazon and look up keywords and hashtags that are relevant to your business or industry.
Use automated tools like Panoramata
Lastly, you can look for competitors easily through automated tools that scrape the web for you.
Panoramata is an invaluable tool for competitive analysis across all channels, whether on social media, landing pages, search engines, SMS, or emails.
Here’s how you can find your competitors on Panoramata.
How to use Panoramata Search
Find a brand
If you already have a list of competitors, you can look them up on the platform to have access to all their marketing materials. To do this:
- Go to Brands Search on the left panel.
- Type in the brand name in the search bar.
- A list that matches the brand name will come up. Locate your desired brand on the list.
- Click on the brand and it will direct you to its brand page.
Search competitors by keywords
As you would on search engines, you can find competitors through keywords on Panoramata.
For example, if your brand is in the haircare industry, you can do the following:
- Go to Brands Search on the left panel
- Input the keyword “haircare” in the search bar.
Voila, you have a list of competitors in the haircare industry!
We won’t stop there because you can refine results further through handy filters. Here are some examples.
Filter by industry
If you want to narrow down your keyword search to an industry, you can use the industry filter to do so.
- Go to Brands Search
- Enter your keyword.
- If you want results only from the health and wellness industry, tick the corresponding box under the Industry section to the left of the search bar.
The results will automatically be filtered.
And to take that to the next step, you can also…
Filter by country
To filter your search results by country, follow these steps.
- Go to Brands Search on the left panel.
- Type in your keyword. In this example, we’ll use jewelry as our keyword.
- Choose a country to use as a filter by going to the Country section on the left side of the search results. Check the box of your choice.
Here, we chose the UK for this filter.
The results will be filtered for you automatically.
Filter by language
There are instances when you want to focus on a language instead of a country. Panoramata also has a filter for that.
The language filter will find brands that use the selected language in their websites, ads, and emails.
To filter by language:
- First, go to Brands Search on the left panel.
- Type in your keyword on the search bar. We’ll use jewelry in this example, too.
- Go to the Language filter section and check the box next to the desired language
It’s that easy!
That’s not all, though. You can also use Panoramata to search for brands trending in your industry. Here’s how.
How to find competitors through Trends Search
- Click Trends Search on the left panel of your Panoramata app
- Select an industry from the list in the second column
- Wait for the results to pop up
The brands in your selected industry will be ranked automatically based on criteria like emails, ads, and growth. Pretty cool, right?
Competitor analysis involves finding your competitors and gathering information about them. It can be a daunting and time-consuming process but tools like Panoramata make it incredibly easy.
Why not save time and centralize your efforts on this all-in-one platform? Sign up for Panoramata for free and start growing your ecommerce business today.
