TikTok Competitor Analysis: How To Be One Step Ahead Of Everyone

TikTok, like any other social media platforms in its glory, has taken over the scene of social networks, while Facebook is on the verge of storming out in tears.

If this sounds like the typical teenage drama, well, it’s not. Promoting your brand on different social media platforms offers you distinct outcomes (obviously).

I’m not much of a rocket science, but surely, regardless of the social media platform you try to become popular on, competitors are everywhere.

Since TikTok seems to run the show at the moment, let’s see how in-depth we can go to find out everything there is to know about TikTok competitor analysis.

1. What is TikTok competitor analysis

The reason why TikTok has become so popular is due to the curiosity (of users) that, apparently, didn’t kill the cat.

The number of TikTok monthly active users has surpassed 1 billion people in 2022. No other social media platform reached this amount of popularity so fast, in just 6 years.

That’s the reason why more and more marketing businesses have taken over this social network and found the appropriate conditions to grow.

They shifted their attention from Instagram and Facebook and worked to grow a fresh new community on TikTok.

Since the audience is still growing on TikTok, the level of TikTok competitors is growing too.

And that’s how the interest for TikTok competitor analysis has sprung. Marketers and social media managers are eager to find out what their competitors are doing and how they can beat them at this game.

A TikTok competitor analysis is the process through which a brand analyses their competitors’ progress, ups and downs on social media.

By manually searching what your competitors are doing on TikTok helps you develop a new plan for the content you’re creating.

Learning from your competitors’ flaws can help you avoid making mistakes on your own.

But hey, don’t forget that failure gets you one step closer to success. Failure happens and that’s ok.

You just have to keep learning how to become better at the marketing game you’re playing.

Growing your audience and brand awareness are among the key points of your TikTok strategy.

Having this in mind, you have to periodically check the progress of your competitors on TikTok to make sure your strategy brings your brand one step ahead of them.

2. How to develop a TikTok competitor analysis

Now that we’ve briefly defined what a TikTok competitor analysis is, it’s time to look at this step-by-step guide to learn exactly how to do it.

• Spot your competitors

Spotting your competitors in the online world is totally different from your list of competitors in the real world.

On TikTok, some brands may have a higher engagement than you, but they may not be just as popular on LinkedIn.

What I want to underlie is that the overall marketing strategy is crucial.

To have a clear view, just make up a list of all your competitors from your niche and go on their TikTok profiles to see what their approach is.

Some may shock you, while others may surprise you with their funny content and their creative way of engaging with their audience.

After you make up this list of competitors, try to categorise them by their TikTok performance.

If you use a TikTok analytics tool, you can always search any TikTok profile to get extra insights about that account’s performance.

Look at the most important metrics, like plays, video views, top performing posts, engagement and reach. This way, you will find out whether you need to improve your TikTok marketing strategy and how.

• Analyze the crucial metrics

Speaking of crucial TikTok metrics, you need to develop a list of metrics that you should periodically check to see the evolution of your brand.

You can use the same pattern to look at other TikTok accounts as well.

Your list of metrics should include:

• Views
• Plays
• Top posts
• Follower count
• Engagement rate
• Reach

• Revise their content

The next step refers to analysing your competitor’s content strategy. Just go to their TikTok account and then use a third-party analytics tool to search for their profile and look at data.

Ask yourself the following questions:

-What trends did they follow lately?
-What was the performance of those videos?
-How often do they post?
-How do they interact with their audience?
-How many shares did their videos had?
-Is their audience your audience too?
-Are they making TikTok lives? How often do they do it?

By thinking (and mostly overthinking) about all these things, you get to develop an in-depth analysis.

An Excel sheet could easily transform into your BFF until you finish your TikTok competitor analysis, filling it with data you gather from their TikTok profile.

If both you and your competitor jumped on the same trend at the same time, you should take a look at what differentiates you and what performance you had.

Luckily, maybe you’re better than them at this. Or you still have a lot of things to learn. Why not doing this by not repeating your competitor’s mistakes?

Taking advantage of every tips and tricks for your TikTok competitor analysis can really help you develop a better understanding of your niche and industry.

• Check out their audience

As a marketer, you need to work hard to convert your leads into your audience and then into your community. Building a strong community around your brand takes you one step closer to success.

If people love you, you will increase sales and be able to grow with their help and for them, fulfilling their needs.

Your audience is your God. I recently thought about this in an even cheesier way.

Followers are just “flowers” spelled differently. You just have to take care of them and “water” them with great content in order for them to grow.

By pairing social listening with your TikTok competitor analysis, you will be able to find out what their audience says about your competitors on social media.

This way, in case some of them are not happy with their products or customer service, you can step in and offer them something better, greater and maybe even cheaper.

• Discover their engagement strategy

This may be the trickiest part. To discover their engagement strategy, you have to pay attention to a lot of details.

The list of details includes the tone of voice they use in their posts, the influencers they use to promote their products and services, how quick they answer their audience’s queries.

And the list could go on and on with other details that only a true TikToker can know.

Find what differentiates your competitor from other brands in the same industry. The thing that makes them shine is also the one that helps them grow their engagement.

The great part about shining is that everyone can do it. Individually, infinitely and even brighter than the rest.

Your sole purpose is to redesign your TikTok marketing strategy after gathering all these insights to become the sun itself.

• Figure out what makes their content go viral

It's no easy task being a social media marketer in the "virality" era. Everyone wants to create content that goes viral, or at least learn what it takes to produce content that breaks all the engagement records and exceeds everyone's expectations.

Let me show how you can do that with Socialinsider.

1. Connect their TikTok account to Socialinsider
2. Select that account from the left sidebar and browse at the TikTok analytics dashboard
3. Pick a post from the Posts section
4. Uncover more post details by clicking on the "See more" button
5. Track your competitors' engagement and viewership journeys on different TikTok posts

3. Top 4 benefits of TikTok competitor analysis

As a social media manager or other job titles from the digital marketing world, you need to be well-organised to be able to face all the challenges.

We all love listicles and ticking off tasks out of them. But also love lists with benefits that encourage you to do something.

Here is a useful list of benefits that will convince you to develop a TikTok competitor analysis to change or edit your marketing strategy.

• Finding your competitors

I have to highlight an important matter here. Your competitors are not your enemies. You are all part of the same industry and you surely have to learn a lot from one another.

Both of you have a slice of the industry’s audience. You just have to respect each other and work on growing your individual brands, while also contributing to the growth of the industry.

As the number of TikTok accounts grows, the number of competitors grows as well. More brands try to find their spot on TikTok, coming up with new content ideas and fresh trends.

That is why you need to constantly be aware of what’s new and keep up with the continuously evolving market that tries to satisfy clients’ needs.

At the end of the day, you and your competitors are in the same boat. It is true that you are rowing towards different goals.

However, along the way, you manage to learn a lot about your strengths and weak points. This can help you grow, depending on your creativity and strength to become better than the rest.

Calculating your next step depending on your competitors’ progress is an adult thing to do.

To move forward means to find a way to leave your competitors behind. And yes, you may use this line as a bumper sticker.

• Taking advantage of opportunities

If users complain about your competitor’s services, you know what you’re supposed to do next.

Step in and offer them a better solution to solve their problem. If you’re thinking it, I’m going to say it: this is not stealing clients, this is offering them something better.

These type of opportunities don’t happen frequently. They are rare, like diamonds.

However, you can always use another strategy, like piggybacking on someone’s trending post.

You may think it’s rude to hop on another’s brand back to attract new visitors, but it’s just the survival of the fittest.

The brands that offer better products and services win. And whatever move you make it’s a fair battle as long as you don’t disrespect others.

• Developing performance benchmarks

If you are organised enough to develop a report where you manually complete with data about your competitors, then this is bliss.

You can develop an in-depth analysis by gathering important insights that matter for you and include them into an Excel.

In this way, you will be able to pinpoint the TikTok metrics that you want to keep an eye on, to see the evolution of your brand from one month to the other.

• Crafting a new starting point for your TikTok strategy

When you manage to see all the data you gathered in one place and take a step back for the bigger picture, you will be able to come up with new ideas.

Your future TikTok marketing strategy will surely look better, changing your perspective while accumulating more knowledge in the field.

The new trends you discover and the tricks that you can learn from other brands on the market can contribute quite a lot to crafting a fresh content plan.

Final thoughts

A TikTok competitor analysis is another piece of the puzzle you need, to put together a strong marketing strategy.

And if all your efforts focus on becoming better, louder and brighter on TikTok, then you will eventually get there. However, patience and hard work are the key here.

May your TikTok content be funny, your Internet connection powerful and may your inspiration guide you like a guardian angel.

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