“Don’t work with children and animals!”
So goes the famous cautionary saying.
But what about… husbands?
Only joking!
John and I thoroughly enjoy working together, and I’m always keen for more time with him, so it wasn’t exactly a burden when he asked me to do some competitor brand analysis for his longstanding web design brand, Brighteye Creative.
As it turned out, my competitor brand analysis would identify some very special USPs to help Brighteye Creative stand out in a niche that is highly price-sensitive. Here’s how.
The Client
Before Twogether Digital… there was Brighteye Creative!
Brighteye Creative was the pseudonym that my husband John operated under before he and I teamed up to create Twogether Digital. It was originally launched to design and build WordPress websites for businesses, Christian churches, and charities.
Now Twogether Digital existed, it was clear that Brighteye Creative desperately needed a revamp.
The aim was to narrow Brighteye Creative’s niche to focus solely on Christian churches, charities and organisations, whilst simultaneously widening the range of services available. Brighteye Creative would be rebranded, the website redesigned and rebuilt and a robust SEO campaign launched.
But before we could do any of this, we needed to understand how Brighteye Creative would be positioned against its new competitors.
The Objective
Our aims were threefold:
- Identify the competitors Brighteye Creative would be going up against in the search results.
- Compare the offer, messaging, services, prices and strengths of those competitors to understand the landscape.
- Identify how Brighteye Creative could potentially position itself against competitors.
The Solution
SERP analysis: identifying the competitors
To begin with, we conducted some keyword research to identify the search terms that users would be utilising to find web design and development, SEO, content marketing and hosting within the target niche.
Once identified, we looked for the competitors ranking at no.1 for each search term. We also identified any who were ranking in the top 10.
We also conducted an interview with John himself, to ask for his industry knowledge of the competitor landscape. He identified a few competitors who were not appearing at No. 1 in the SERP (Search Engine Result Pages).
This gave us our list of competitors.
Brand and offer analysis: determining how Brighteye Creative could position itself
We laid the competitors out in a grid and analysed their websites according to the following criteria:
- Value proposition
- Brand identity/tone
- Core products/services
- Marketing/sales channels
- Price structure
- Strengths
- Challenges
This allowed us to assess which areas of the market were being targeted, and identify potential gaps.
Using this, we were able to analyse the landscape and report on our findings.
The Results
The market leaders within the industry tended to focus solely on website design and development and included DIY website builders (cost-effective option) and agencies (bespoke luxury option). These allowed for a custom-built result that accurately reflected the church’s personality.
The DIY website builders required a church congregation member to be available to do the work. The agencies in this bracket provided a premium service. But, interestingly did not always include additional services, such as SEO, content creation or printing services.
There were a few mid-range agencies, that offered additional services such as SEO, content marketing and graphic design for print.
At the other end of the spectrum, were those that offered a very basic service at an affordable price. Within this collection of competitors, you don’t tend to find many who offer service outside of the minimum requirements for a church (e.g. build, hosting, maintenance, email and support). The design of these websites was based on set templates, meaning churches had limited ability to convey their personality to their community.
Brighteye Creative would not be able to compete on price. The bottom end of the market was basically a “race to the bottom”.
However, very few of the competitors bothered to build a brand.
Brighteye Creative could really stand out if it developed a robust brand identity.
We identified several USPs that would help Brighteye Creative stand out:
- Its websites are fully optimised for search engines as standard (even some of the big agencies didn’t make this provision explicit on their websites).
- Its branding service always aims to convey the personality of the congregation (rather than just a Christian cross!).
- Its brand workshop is unique, allowing churches and charities to truly explore what sets them apart and should be highlighted to the top end of its market as a way to capture the vision of the leadership team.
Our competitor brand analysis helped us identify Brighteye Creative’s new position in the market – that of a mid-range agency servicing the Christian church and charity sector that could over a wide range of digital marketing services.