28 Apr Using Competitive Analysis to Differentiate Your Brand: 5 steps for Healthcare Marketers: Part 2 of 2

As we discussed in part 1 of this 2-part blog, differentiating your brand from your competitors is essential, whatever sector of the healthcare industry you’re in.

The key to differentiating your own brand is understanding your competitors’ differentiation. That’s the purpose of competitive analysis.

Here’s how to perform a competitive analysis…

Step 1: Identify your competitors

Your analysis should include your primary and secondary competitors. It also should include your “maybe” competitors – those that aspire to compete with you in the future.

Who do third-party entities – such as market reports, industry associations, and especially Google – group you with? Check and see. If you’re not competing product for product or service for service with these companies, in cyberspace you still may be competing for share of voice, customer mindshare, and search engine rankings.

Step 2: Dive into your competitors’ web content

Don’t take a hit-and-run approach; dig in. Explore every pathway, every link, every call to action.

The organization you’re analyzing may have multiple websites – for example, a product-dedicated site, company site, perhaps one or more non-branded educational sites, microsites… plus landing pages.

Be sure to scour competitors’ social media sites too. Their pages on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and other sites can be as robust as their main website.

That’s a lot of content to review and an invaluable source of information about each competitor’s:

•  Mission and vision

•  Target audiences

•  Products and services in their portfolio

•  Positioning

•  Messaging: meaning, prioritization, and tone

•  Branding: palette, font, imagery, logo

•  SEO strategy

•  Content marketing strategy across owned, earned, and paid media

A competitive analysis also encompasses a review of each company’s paid search efforts and results, as well as their digital and social media campaigns.

Step 3: Dive deeper than just digital

Beyond digital tactics, it is also important to analyze other communication channels:

•  TV spots

•  Podcasts

•  Radio spots

•  OOH (out-of-home) advertising

•  Print advertising and literature

•  Experiential promotions

Whenever possible, obtain physical samples of literature, promotional giveaways, and other materials. Pick them up at conferences and tradeshows.

Step 4: See what customers and employees say

Reading reviews of competitors on Google, Yelp, Healthgrades, Glassdoor, and any other relevant sites can be revealing.

Previously published market analyses also can be helpful to assess. So can articles about the state of the industry, trends to watch, and related topics where competitors are compared.

And, of course, if primary market research is feasible, interviews with stakeholders, customers, and influencers can be among your most valuable resources. Input from detractors who raise objections to your brand can be valuable too.

One example of competitive analysis at work for hospitals and health systems

We’ve found that hospitals and health systems often promote their experience, expertise, innovation, service area footprint, breadth of services, U.S. News & World Report rankings, and several other commonly featured attributes. But fewer competitors – surprisingly few in many cases – promote “softer,” less quantifiable attributes that are important to their target audiences: compassionate care, family-focused care, diversity of staff and patients, and more.

No single one of these attributes may necessarily drive positioning. But any or all may play a role in development of messaging and help tip the scales when you, like everyone else, are featuring your experience, expertise, innovation, service area footprint, breadth of services, and U.S. News & World Report rankings.

Step 5: Organize your findings into actionable insights

Your competitive analysis report should explain the objectives of your research, the methodology you used, your findings, and recommendations for next steps.

Your findings should highlight the areas of clutter in the marketplace and, most importantly, the open space that your analysis uncovered: the attributes that are potentially of value to your target audiences but, as of yet, are unclaimed by your competitors in communications.

The next step is to integrate claims into your messaging, perhaps even your positioning, and then to communicate them consistently and distinguish them with a creative, consistent design approach across all tactics in all appropriate media.

Analyze competitors’ visual messaging too

Don’t stop at text. Your analysis also should encompass the types of images and graphic elements that competitors feature.

To extend the hospital/health system example… we examine the visuals on each competitor’s website and other tactics and often see a plethora of the same images: buildings (the “edifice complex” in action), equipment, surgeons wearing headlamps gathered around an operating table, and photos of objects that have been used so often to communicate “medicine” and “science,” they have become cliches – the most common being an artfully lit stethoscope on a desk, around a neck, or in the pocket of a white coat.

We also see way too many models posing as physicians and nurses in groups of three or more, holding intense meetings around new conference tables. Or standing in the hallway, gesturing at an iPad.

Surprisingly, what we see much less frequently are images of patients – or at least “real-looking” models and families – even among hospitals where, according to their messaging in text, “patients come first.” This presents an opportunity for brands to emphasize a more humanistic approach.

Put competitive analysis to work for your brand

Differentiation of your brand is the fundamental contribution of competitive analysis. It’s what helps you identify your brand’s true point of difference and how to articulate it so you stand apart from all other options in the market.

Bryant Brown Healthcare excels in performing competitive analyses to help our clients’ brands stand apart. We also can help you articulate your positioning, map your messaging to all constituents, creatively brand your product or service, then write, design, develop, and deploy uniquely effective communication tactics.

Have questions? Need help? Let’s talk!