Have you ever been in a position of competitive strength with your digital marketing? For example, were you once enjoying number placement in Google and are now nowhere to be found?

Something happened, either with the Google algorithm itself, or because of actions of your competitors. How do you ensure it doesn’t happen again?

 

There are four questions that any business owner must ask themselves in order to determine the strength of their online competitive position:

1. Will your business’ position improve or deteriorate if your current strategies continue?

 

2. How well does your business rank relative to key rivals in terms of measures of strategic strength? (Are your competitors doing things better?)

 

3. Does your business have a sustainable competitive advantage?

 

4. Does your business have the ability to defend itself in light of:

• Disruption within digital marketspace,

• Key driving technical and behavioural forces within the industry,

• Competitive pressures, and

• Anticipated moves of rivals or other major players?

Undertaking a self-assesssment based on these questions and using the following framework can help you understand your online competitive strengths and weaknesses and provide insight into how you can defend or enhance your position.

 

Here is a framework to help you determine your strengths and enable you to gather the intelligence required to combat competitive pressures and navigate changes in the technological environment.

1. List your digital marketing assets and group them into Social, EDM, Website, and Advertising.

2. List the key success factors & other measures of competitive strength within your industry.

3. Rate your organisation and key rivals against each factor.

4. Add a weighting to significant factors (a Weighted Competitive Strength Assessment).

5. Multiply to arrive at a score for each factor.

6. Add up the individual factor ratings to get an overall measure of competitive strength.

7. Determine whether your business has a competitive advantage or disadvantage based on the overall strength ratings.