Understanding competitive mapping in digital marketing

Through our Digital Marketing Agency Optimize 360

What is Competitive Mapping?

---

Le competitive mappingalso known as competitive mapping, is an essential marketing concept in the digital world.

It is used to analyse and assess the position of competitors on a specific market and to help companies develop effective strategies based on this information.

What is Competitive Mapping?

Competitive mapping is a graphical representation that highlights the relative position of the various players in a market. This representation is generally based on a system of axes to compare competitors' offers according to different dimensions, such as price, quality or brand awareness.

The main objective of competitive mapping is to identify the strengths and weaknesses of market players, as well as the opportunities and threats that this competitive environment represents for the company under study.

By understanding the competitive landscape, marketers can develop action plans and adjust their strategies accordingly.

The stages involved in creating a digital marketing competitive map

1 Competitive analysis

Analysing the competition is a fundamental step in understanding the dynamics of your business sector and identifying the key players. Competitive mapping enables you to identify strengths and weaknesses of each player according to different criteria and adapt your own digital strategy to better meet market needs.

Competitive intelligence

To carry out this analysis, it is important to set up a competitive intelligence effective. This involves regularly gathering information about competitors, their products and services, their communication channels and their marketing actions. This can be done using specialist tools or simply by following competitors' news and social networks.

2 Definition of assessment criteria

Once the information has been gathered, you need to define the relevant evaluation criteria for comparing the different players in the market. These criteria can vary according to the objectives of your competitive mapping and can include :

• • The quality of the products or services offered
  • Price positioning
  • The distribution and communication channels used
  • The reputation of the company
  • Technical and human skills

3 Data collection and processing

Once the evaluation criteria have been defined, it's time to collect and process the data relating to each competitor. To do this, you can use automated tools such as Google Alerts, Mention or Buzzumo for track in real time mentions of the selected companies on the web and social networks.

Data interpretation

It is crucial to interpret the data collected correctly so as not to jump to conclusions. For example, a company with a low profile on social networks is not necessarily less successful than one with a high profile. visible. It may simply be a different strategic choice.

4.competitive mapping visualization

To make it easier to understand and analyse the data, it is useful to graphically represent the results of the competitive mapping. You can create a diagram highlighting the positions of the different players in the market according to the criteria selected.

Use of appropriate tools

There are a number of free and paid tools available for this type of visualisation, including MindMeister, Lucidchart and XMind. Choose the tool that best suits your needs and provides a clear, intuitive representation of the relative position of competitors.

5.adapting your own digital strategy

Competitive mapping is an excellent basis for rethinking your own digital marketing strategy. By identifying your competitors' strengths and weaknesses, you can determine the opportunities you need to seize to gain visibility and attract new customers. For example:

1. 1. Develop a unique competitive advantage, such as innovative technology or superior service
   2. Target a market niche that your competitors are not yet exploiting
   3. Putting in place an effective content strategy to improve your referencing and your presence on social networks

6.monitoring and regular updating

It is important to note that competitive mapping is not a one-off exercise, but rather an ongoing process. Markets are constantly evolving, and this has an impact both on competition and on consumer expectations and preferences. It is therefore important to regularly update your mappingThis will enable you to adjust your evaluation criteria if necessary, and to monitor the development of your competitors in order to remain competitive in your sector of activity.

Adapting your strategy to new information

Don't hesitate to adapt your digital strategy according to the new data collected when you update your competitive mapping. This will enable you to remain responsive to changes in the market and maintain a sustainable competitive advantage.

The benefits of competitive mapping in digital marketing

The use of competitive mapping offers a number of major benefits for companies, including :

• A global view of the competitive environment: This type of mapping provides an overview of the market situation and the position of the various players in relation to the criteria being studied (price, quality, etc.).
• Identify market opportunities and threats: By analysing the strengths and weaknesses of their competitors, marketers can identify under-exploited niches or segments where their offerings are less satisfactory, and adapt their strategy accordingly.
• Get to know your competitors better: Competitive mapping is a valuable tool for gaining a better understanding of competitors' offerings, targets and strategies. This gives you a competitive edge when designing products or services tailored to market needs.
• Adapting your marketing strategy : Thanks to a better understanding of the competitive environment and their own position in the market, companies can adjust their marketing actions to strengthen their differentiation and competitiveness.

Applications of competitive mapping in digital marketing

Competitive mapping is used in a variety of situations and at different levels of marketing strategy:

• SWOT analysis : Competitive mapping can form a solid basis for a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis, which aims to understand the company's internal and external strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
• Market segmentation : By highlighting the different offers on the market, competitive mapping helps to determine target customer segments and to refine communication and marketing actions.
• Launching new products or services: Competitive mapping enables you to assess the relevance of a new product or service based on the positioning of competitors already present on the market. This helps to identify the strengths and weaknesses of existing products and services and to adapt them accordingly.

In short, competitive mapping is a valuable tool for marketers wishing to develop effective strategies in a constantly changing digital environment. Thanks to this method, they can gain a better understanding of the market in which they operate and adjust their actions in line with trends and the competition.