How to Analyze Competitors on Instagram to Increase Sales

Instagram competitor analysis provides you with information if you are performing well compared to your similar brands to increase sales. The growth of your online business can be a good indicator of success on social media. You gained 20% more followers, great job! Your average number of comments per Instagram post is increasing by 10%, that’s awesome! But does it matter? 

It is critical to keep in mind that comparing yourself to others can lead you to lose sight of what works in your industry. This is because you need to improve certain aspects of your social media strategy. We will discuss a few strategies of Instagram competitor analysis to increase sales in the article.

An competitor analysis of 250 business executives found that 60% believe investing more resources into social media will give them a competitive edge.

How do you get started? There are five simple steps to follow, so don’t worry.

1. How to Find Competitors on Instagram

Find out which platforms your competitors are using on social media for digital marketing to increase sales; let’s consider Instagram in our case. It is likely that you already have a general idea of who your main competitors are. It’s more complicated than that to grow your business. You want to focus on competitors who use Instagram marketing actively.

Look for brands who use Instagram actively in your space if you’re looking for social media competitors. You can benchmark yourself against these brands and learn from them. It’s pointless to compare your social strategy to one of your competitors if they don’t have one.

Google is the easiest way to find your competitors. Look for keywords that consumers would use to find your business. A company that sells ground coffee, for example, would search for “ground coffee” or “instant coffee.”

Amazon and Target are two large online marketplaces you can rule out. Look for websites that are relevant to your industry. 

Look for brands of our size as they would be good choices. Next, go to each website and see if they are active on social media, and what platform they use, as well it is a good idea to consider analyzing competitors’ costs prices and offers; maybe discounts and coupons on liking or following social media pages to increase sales.

A website’s header or footer usually links to its social media profiles. If you’re in a highly competitive industry, this process may take a long time. However, if you are thorough, the results will be better.

2. Data Collection of Competitors

The next step is to gather data on your competitors after you have narrowed them down.

The data Instagram has about your competitors isn’t very public. You can use a good Instagram competitor analyzer for digital marketing to extract reports to compare your brand with your competitors in key areas, such as:

• How fast are your competitors growing their audiences?
• Find out how often your competitors publish. Engaging your audience may be difficult if you don’t post frequently enough.
• Check out how many likes and comments your competitors are receiving.
• Search for the most popular hashtags used by your competitors. Using the same ones might help you reach more people if they’re relevant.
• Check out your competitors’ most popular posts. Take a look at why these posts perform well. Do they show products? What colors are they using? Use this information to improve your pictures and videos by finding out what they have that your content doesn’t.

Find out how many results come up when you search for #product or #brandname on Instagram.

You can learn a lot about your competitors’ popularity by doing this. The company has an active following if a lot of people search for #brandname.

In cases where a brand’s hashtag has multiple variations, choose the most popular one. The name of the company is usually all that is required. The majority of posts use #brand along with alternatives like #brandcoffee.

In addition to what you were searching for, you’ll find related Instagram posts as well. To avoid having to compete for the same hashtags, make sure that the findings you come up with are relevant to your business.

3. Examine the Activities on Instagram

For a quick overview of how your competitors use each platform, gather your numbers and then start investigating manually. What are the benefits of doing this? 

96% of companies say the social media accounts of their rivals are useful sources of competitive intelligence, according to Crayon’s 2021 State of Competitive Intelligence.

It is important to take a look at how active the competition is. Here are some questions to ask yourself:

• How long has it been since they posted?
• What is the average time between posts?
• Are they responsive to comments?

Answering these three questions will give you an idea of how active brands are. For a brand to be considered active, it should post at least once every two days.

Next, check out what your competitors are publishing. To find out how much of their posts are promotional, you need to determine what percentage is promotional. Calculate the percentage of promotional posts in each competitor’s last 10 posts on Instagram. It can be harder to distinguish between promotional and non-promotional posts.

A good rule of thumb is if the post requests a purchase, it’s promotional. Make a spreadsheet with the data you collected from each competitor.

When doing an Instagram analysis, some marketers look at their competitors’ brand voices. The social media voice describes a brand’s tone and POV. Is the brand represented through a post (we) or are individuals allowed to speak for the brand (John)?

It’s up to you to include this information, but your specific tone will largely be determined by your brand style guidelines. Competitors shouldn’t influence your decision too much.

4. Analyze Your Competitors on Instagram More Closely

Check out the websites of your competitors. There is a close relationship between content marketing and social media, and digital marketing, as you are aware. Because of this, many companies use blogs to distribute content on social media. Check how many blogs your competition has.

You can start doing Instagram competitor analysis of your competitors’ social media performance by manually using our template if you’re new to social media competitive analysis and want to familiarize yourself with how they behave.

Social listening is also an excellent way to gain a broader perspective of all conversations occurring across social media in your industry and competitors

5. Analyzing the Data of Competitor Analysis

You need to use this data now that you have compiled it. You can compare your brand’s social media profiles with the competition using your brand’s analytics.

Don’t copy exactly what everyone is doing with this Instagram competitive analysis. You will instead be guided toward getting started in the right direction.

Perhaps your competitor analysis shows most of your competition only posts promotional content 10% of the time. It might not be a good idea to go too far over that, otherwise, you may turn off your audience.

Your Instagram strategy might have targeted the wrong social networks altogether. We can see from the example that Facebook and Instagram are worth investing in. Competitors who do not use these two would lose out.

Make Sure You Pay Attention to the Data

Ultimately, it’s all about comparing your brand’s metrics and data from Instagram competitor analysis to increase sales. In light of what you find, adjust your digital marketing strategy as necessary. Consider doing an Instagram competitor analysis to increase sales if you’ve never done one. You can use the information you discover to gain an advantage over your competitors! To dig in and see trends in your competitors’ data, use digital content marketing strategies when you’re ready.