Competitor Analysis: Doing it the Right Way

Competitor Analysis is a lot of work – it needs to be done correctly. In this article, we will teach you how to do a good competitor analysis for your business so that you can build a strong marketing plan and execute it with ease.

Why Do a Competitor Analysis?

Competitor analysis will give you a better idea of how to market your product by showing you what’s working and what’s not. It will tell you which channels are the most sensible to use, where your products should be sold, and who your target markets are. You’ll also be able to see new opportunities for improvement from those who have been in the business longer than you have.

A competitor analysis is a vital component of any successful marketing strategy.

The process can be time consuming, but it’s worth it. You should do a competitor analysis before you start your campaign because it’ll help you learn what methods are working for other businesses in your industry. It’ll also give you ideas for new marketing campaigns that might work for yours.

What to Include in Your Competitor Analysis

You should include your competitors’ features and pricing, and list the weaknesses and strengths of their service. You should also consider what tactics your competitors use and how they help to shape the market.

The first thing you need to do is take a look at your competitors’ websites. You should examine their social media following, contact information, and any disclaimers about delivery or shipping costs.

Once you know who your competitor is, create a list of how they’re different than you. Think about what they can offer that sets them apart from other companies.

A COMPARISON OF COMPETITORS

Understanding the competitors is essential for success on any market. A good response to competition requires that you understand the tactics used by competitors.

The analysis of competitors is critical to any marketing strategy, and to ignore the competition would be to assume the organization operates in a vacuum, which is evidently not the case.

When analyzing the competition, the following key factors will be considered:

Are they able to market effectively? What budget do they have for advertising?
Innovating at a high level: what do competitors do and how are innovations delivered?
What is the management team’s skill level?

An extensive strategic review would include the following:

Who are the competitors?
What are the goals?
What strategies are being pursued and what successes have been achieved?
Strengths and weaknesses that have been identified?
How will the competition behave and how will they react to offensive moves?

How to Gather the Data for Your Competition Analysis

The first step of gathering data is to compile a list of your competitors and figure out who they are in relation to your business. This includes the specific product or service, and what they do better and worse than you do. From there, it’s important to take some time researching about these competitors and their business model. There are a number of ways to go about gathering this data.

The first is through the PR arm of your company. This will help you find early mentions of your competitors, as well as their successes and failures, and recent press releases. You can also use social media tools like Twitter Advanced Search or Facebook to find people talking about your competition.

Analyzing Your Competition

Differentiate yourself from the competition and think about what you can offer that is not already there. How can you be the only one who offers it? How can you make it better than your competitors? Competitors are the people who share the same market space with you.

However, not all competitors are created equal. You want to be able to identify your key competitors and analyze their strengths and weaknesses in order to improve yourself and your own market position.

Competitive analysis and application is a valuable tool to gain insight into the behavior of current and potential competitors as well as gain an understanding of the broader competitive environment through the gathering, analysis and application of competitive information.

Businesses can use this information to support strategic decision-making, inform their positioning, build market orientation, and gain a competitive advantage.

The purpose of competitor intelligence needs to be clear to organizations. As per their competitor profiles, the output required and research should be carefully targeted;

Assessment of needs
Satisfaction of customers
Positioning of the company
Segmentation

Carry out Competitor research effectively

It is not enough to collect information about the activities of competitors on an informal basis or ad hoc basis.

Taking a proactive, thorough, and structured approach to research can provide information as well as conversation with clients and industry contacts.

In doing so, organisations can reduce the unexpected, take advantage of opportunities, and manage threats.

You can find information online about market trends, legislation, customers, suppliers, and competitors.

There are search engines, websites, and other sources of general information that are easily accessible and in an easily digestible format.

Specialist information about competitors, technical and product development are still difficult to obtain online, but techniques for gathering this type of information have expanded to include social media channels, for example, and websites that assemble competitor analytics.

Information gathering can be ethical or unethical. There are few ethical issues with publicly available information from sources such as press releases, annual reports, job advertisements, and the internet.

In contrast, sending employees to competitor organizations for job interviews is questionable.

The use of methods such as electronic surveillance and hacking to conduct business espionage is highly unethical and in most cases illegal.

As part of a broader market and environmental analysis programme, individuals and organizations can use this checklist to gather information in a structured and proactive manner.

Conclusion

If you want to know how to do competitive analysis the right way, make sure you are doing it with a clear goal in mind. Make sure you are using the right tools, and be aware of your data limitations.