LinkedIn is not just a platform for networking and personal branding; it’s also a powerful tool for conducting competitive benchmarking. Competitive benchmarking is the process of comparing your business, product, or services with key competitors to understand where you stand in the market, identify best practices, and uncover opportunities for growth. Here’s how to effectively use LinkedIn to conduct competitive benchmarking for your business.
1. Identify Key Competitors on LinkedIn
The first step in competitive benchmarking is identifying who your key competitors are on LinkedIn. LinkedIn’s vast database allows you to research companies of all sizes within your industry.
How to Identify Competitors:
- Use LinkedIn Search Filters: Use LinkedIn’s advanced search filters to find competitors. You can filter by company size, industry, location, and even company activity. This helps you pinpoint the companies most relevant to your business.
- Follow Competitor Company Pages: Once you’ve identified key competitors, follow their company pages. This allows you to stay updated on their latest posts, announcements, and overall activity.
- Research Competitors Through Your Network: Utilize your connections to find out which companies are viewed as competitors by others in your industry. Your LinkedIn connections can give you insights into direct competitors or emerging players.
Identifying competitors gives you a foundation for comparing performance and understanding trends within your industry.
2. Analyze Competitor Content and Engagement
A key aspect of competitive benchmarking on LinkedIn is evaluating your competitors’ content strategy and how their audience engages with their posts. By studying their content, you can uncover what resonates with your target market and what doesn’t.
What to Look For:
- Content Frequency: Analyze how often your competitors are posting. Are they maintaining an active presence with daily or weekly updates, or are their posts more sporadic?
- Benchmark Tip: If your competitors are posting regularly and receiving strong engagement, you might need to increase your own posting frequency to keep up.
- Types of Content: Pay attention to the types of content your competitors share. Are they focusing on blog posts, infographics, videos, or industry reports? Do they use LinkedIn polls or engage in discussions via LinkedIn articles?
- Benchmark Tip: If video content or LinkedIn articles are driving high engagement, it may be beneficial to include more of those formats in your own content strategy.
- Audience Engagement: Study how many likes, shares, and comments their posts receive. Posts with higher engagement can indicate topics or types of content that resonate more with your shared target audience.
- Benchmark Tip: Look at the tone and style of their engagement. Are they responding to comments and encouraging discussions, or are they passively posting without interacting with their audience?
This step helps you gauge the effectiveness of their content and whether your content strategy needs adjustments for more engagement.
3. Use LinkedIn’s Company Insights Tool
LinkedIn provides a Company Insights tool that can be a goldmine for competitive benchmarking. This tool allows you to track company growth, employee demographics, and other key data that give you a clearer view of your competitors’ performance.
Key Metrics to Track:
- Employee Growth: Monitor the hiring trends of your competitors. If you notice a rapid increase in hiring, especially in departments such as sales or R&D, it could indicate that the company is expanding its market share or investing in innovation.
- Benchmark Tip: Compare their growth with your own company’s trajectory to identify areas where you may need to accelerate hiring or restructuring.
- Employee Tenure and Experience: Use LinkedIn to analyze the average tenure of employees at competing firms. If they have a high turnover rate, it could be a sign of internal issues, while longer tenures suggest strong employee satisfaction and a positive work culture.
- Benchmark Tip: If your competitors attract and retain more experienced talent, you may need to review your own recruitment and retention strategies.
- Skills and Expertise: By analyzing the profiles of employees at competing companies, you can identify the top skills that are valued in the industry and see how your team’s skill set compares.
- Benchmark Tip: If your competitors are hiring employees with skills in cutting-edge technologies, it may be time to upskill your team or hire individuals with those in-demand competencies.
Company Insights provides a more granular view of competitor operations, helping you identify growth areas and skill gaps.
4. Benchmark Product and Service Offerings
LinkedIn is a great platform to keep tabs on how competitors are promoting their products or services. Studying their value propositions and promotional tactics gives you insight into how they differentiate themselves in the market.
Key Areas to Examine:
- Product Announcements: Monitor how competitors announce new products, services, or updates on LinkedIn. What messaging do they use? How do they position their offerings to target customers? Are they focusing on specific pain points or trends?
- Benchmark Tip: If your competitors emphasize innovation, quality, or customer service in their messaging, compare how your own product or service offerings stack up in those areas.
- Customer Testimonials and Case Studies: Many companies share success stories or customer testimonials on LinkedIn. Analyzing how your competitors highlight customer satisfaction or product effectiveness can provide ideas for your own promotional content.
- Benchmark Tip: If your competitors regularly showcase case studies, consider sharing more detailed customer success stories to establish credibility and trust with your target audience.
- Pricing and Promotions: While exact pricing details may not always be visible, you can get clues about their pricing strategies by looking at promotional campaigns, special offers, or discounts shared on LinkedIn.
- Benchmark Tip: If competitors are running promotions that drive engagement, consider whether similar offers or loyalty programs could enhance your competitive edge.
Understanding how your competitors promote their offerings gives you actionable insights to refine your own product positioning and marketing strategy.
5. Analyze Competitor Endorsements and Recommendations
LinkedIn recommendations and skill endorsements are excellent indicators of what your competitors’ customers and employees value. Examining these endorsements can help you understand the strengths and unique selling points your competitors emphasize.
Key Insights to Gather:
- Skill Endorsements: Look at which skills are most endorsed for leaders and employees at competitor companies. These skills can reveal the areas where your competitors are seen as industry leaders.
- Benchmark Tip: Compare your own team’s skills and endorsements to see if there are areas for improvement or skills you should prioritize developing.
- Recommendations: LinkedIn recommendations from clients or business partners can provide you with insights into the key strengths or selling points that competitors focus on. For example, they might highlight superior customer service, innovative solutions, or reliability.
- Benchmark Tip: If a particular competitor consistently receives recommendations for exceptional client service, you may need to emphasize and improve client relationships or customer support initiatives.
This information helps you assess which aspects of their business or operations are most praised by others in the industry.
6. Join Relevant LinkedIn Groups
LinkedIn groups dedicated to specific industries or niches often attract thought leaders, employees, and advocates from competitor companies. Joining these groups allows you to engage with your competitors’ audiences, observe conversations, and gather key insights into their strategies.
How to Leverage LinkedIn Groups for Benchmarking:
- Participate in Discussions: By engaging in conversations, you can gain a deeper understanding of the challenges and trends affecting your industry. You may also discover how competitors are addressing these issues.
- Monitor Competitor Activity: See what types of questions competitors are answering, what content they are sharing, and how group members respond. This can give you insights into what your shared audience values.
- Compare Thought Leadership: Pay attention to how competitors position themselves in group discussions. Are they perceived as experts or industry leaders?
LinkedIn groups give you access to discussions and conversations that can provide useful insights into competitor strategies.
7. Monitor Competitor Ad Campaigns with LinkedIn Ads
If your competitors are using LinkedIn ads to promote their services or products, it’s important to monitor their ad campaigns. Ads can reveal key messaging strategies, target audience insights, and the competitive landscape in your industry.
How to Monitor LinkedIn Ads:
- Use the LinkedIn Ad Library: While LinkedIn doesn’t offer a formal ad library like Facebook, you can still monitor the ads that appear in your feed from competitors. Pay attention to the frequency, messaging, and calls to action.
- Targeted Messaging: Analyze how competitors tailor their ads to specific industries or job roles. Are they targeting senior executives, entry-level professionals, or a niche market within your industry?
- Benchmark Tip: Compare your ad messaging to see if you’re effectively targeting the right audience. Adjust your ads based on the insights you gather from competitor campaigns.
Monitoring competitor ads helps you refine your own advertising strategy and uncover gaps in your messaging.
Conclusion
Using LinkedIn to conduct competitive benchmarking provides powerful insights into your competitors’ strategies, performance, and positioning in the market. By monitoring their content, employee data, customer engagement, and advertising efforts, you can identify opportunities for improvement and stay ahead of the competition. Incorporate these strategies into your benchmarking process to fine-tune your business approach and elevate your market position.