If you are going through the annual marketing planning process and realize that you have not completely analyzed your firm’s position in the marketplace, it may be time to begin situational analysis.  Situational analysis is the process of evaluating the firm’s situation as a whole and by market sector.  The intent is to develop a sharpened marketing strategy which includes: understanding where the firm is today, envisioning where it wants to go, and determining how it will get to where it wants to go. This process requires a keen sense of the firm’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT).

A competitive analysis aims to report competitors' strengths and weaknesses in your market. A thorough evaluation will greatly assist any firm looking to create strategies that will help gain an advantage, identify ways to hinder competitors from entering the market, and exploit any weaknesses in a competitor's service offering.

Once a firm identifies the ideal client profiles, it is time to discover what distinguishes a professional services firm from the competition.  The market is subject to perpetual change.  Client behaviors change, and new rivals will always enter the market, altering the competitive landscape. Analyzing the competition is the first step to crafting a formidable content marketing strategy.  Let’s begin with the questions that help shed light on how a firm shapes up against the competition.