A few days ago, a eatery manager in Riyadh expressed frustration that his establishment wasn't visible in Google listings despite being popular by customers. This is a common issue I observe with local businesses throughout the Kingdom.
Recently, a company director expressed frustration that his online presence was consuming considerable sums of riyals with minimal results. After analyzing his tactics, I found several serious mistakes that are extremely typical among Saudi businesses.
For a financial customer, we implemented a flexible design system that intelligently adjusted controls, text presentation, and structure based on the active language, producing a forty-two percent growth in audience participation.
I spend at least 120 minutes each regularly analyzing our competitors':
- Digital structure and UX
- Articles and publishing frequency
- Online platforms engagement
- Client testimonials and assessments
- Search approach and positions
Valuable segments to implement:
- Geographic regions within Saudi Arabia (behavior varies significantly between locations)
- Income brackets specific to the Saudi economy
- Traditional adherence range
- Technology adoption stages
Last year, I observed as three rival companies invested heavily into developing their operations on a particular social media platform. Their attempts failed spectacularly as the channel turned out to be a mismatch for Rc.Intaps.com our industry.
For a investment client, we developed a customized measurement framework that featured culturally-relevant interaction signals. This approach revealed undetected conversion opportunities that improved their revenue by 127%.
I now employ several tools that have substantially enhanced our market intelligence:
- Search analysis platforms to analyze competitors' SEO strategies
- Social listening platforms to follow rivals' social activity
- Site monitoring solutions to observe modifications to their online presence
- Communication monitoring to get their campaigns
After considerable time of making decisions based on guesswork, their enhanced analytics-based methodology produced a significant improvement in sales percentage and a 167% decrease in marketing expenses.
I use a basic document to track our competition's pricing adjustments every week. This has allowed us to:
- Discover cyclical promotion cycles
- Recognize special offer approaches
- Understand their pricing psychology
For a public portal, we implemented customized measurement that discovered substantial disparities in engagement between Arabic-preferring and international tongue visitors. This understanding led to targeted optimizations that enhanced overall service effectiveness by over seventy percent.
Start by identifying ALL your competitors – not just the obvious ones. Throughout our research, we found that our largest rival wasn't the well-known company we were tracking, but a new business with an novel model.
Key multilingual metrics to monitor:
- Language switching habits
- Completion ratio disparities by tongue selection
- Exit positions in translated journeys
- Query patterns variations across languages
I recommend categorizing competitors as:
- Direct competitors (offering equivalent products/services)
- Indirect competitors (with some similarity)
- New disruptors (new companies with innovative models)
When I launched my e-commerce business three years ago, I was certain that our special products would stand out naturally. I dismissed competitor analysis as superfluous – a choice that nearly destroyed my entire company.
Six months into our launch, our sales were disappointing. It wasn't until I happened to a comprehensive report about our market sector that I discovered how oblivious I'd been to the market realities around us.