I am going to buy a lamp for myself.

It is happening for sure. This is an example of sure-shot demand. (You cannot go blaming lack of demand for your diminished sales)

Who am I going to buy it from?

There isn’t just a single lamp vendor available. There are hundreds and thousands of them.

The point is, that your business will not be able to exist in its own space. It will operate in a competitive environment. 

There are several competing companies selling their products or services, and if you don’t stand out, they will pick your competitor’s offering. 

That is why you must learn about your competitors, their vulnerabilities, and strengths, to determine if there are any potential risks to the business.

You should not just design your company’s strategy, but you should also consider the strategies of your competitors.

The analysis of your competitors is a continuous activity that includes not only the identification of existing competitors but also the identification of potential competitors. It depicts the market’s overall competitive condition.

Now that we have established that ignoring Competitive Analysis can be a costly error that puts businesses at a disadvantage. Let’s look at how incompetent and erroneous competitive analysis is another pitfall most businesses succumb to.

Here are 9 typical mistakes that you must avoid while conducting competitor research. 

1. Not knowing who your competitors are or preparing a shortlist

When we ask prospective clients who their rivals are, they usually give us a few names — the major players with whom their sales staff have been battling for years. 

Do a microanalysis to acquire a better understanding of the competitive landscape. Go through each product or service one at a time.

The big fish and the small fish should both be considered in a competitive analysis. 

Every business begins small. You don’t want to be caught off guard if a tiny competitor expands and takes market share from you. 

It’s also crucial to look at who’s coming up in the search results. Even if a company isn’t well-known, it can dominate SEO and rank top on Google.

It’s a serious yet all-too-common blunder.

Due to a lack of time, knowledge, or experience, smaller and specialty companies are frequently overlooked. As a result, the business can make it far more difficult to do an accurate and systematic market analysis (major players, market size and value, etc.)

2. Not keeping up with market trends

Not keeping a tab on what’s trending in the industry – products, competitors, technology – is a surefire way to lose market share, make the sales force appear out of touch, and make marketing appear outdated.

Even if it’s not a direct competition, most sectors move quickly, especially online, so it’s crucial to keep up with what’s going on.

You must stay abreast of new products, services, rivals, new technology, and other market developments. You can’t let your sales team lose touch with what’s going on in the market; otherwise, you’ll lose power and position.

While conducting your initial brand research, keep track of the social platforms where your competitors are most engaged, the best time to post on social media, and likewise. This will assist you in determining where to concentrate your competitive intelligence efforts and find prospective market possibilities.

3. Inconsistent Competitive Analysis

Competitor analysis is a continuous process. It should be done on a regular basis. 

Some businesses regard the consistency of such a procedure as a waste of time and money, yet this is not the case.

The world moves at breakneck speed, and the digital world moves at an even faster pace. 

There are a lot of changes going on, and they’re everywhere. You should evaluate what works and what doesn’t work every quarter, as well as whether there is new competition or perhaps some failures among major companies in your sector or marketplace.

Competitive intelligence isn’t a tool you can turn on and off whenever you want. The information is updated daily. You may be taken off guard if you aren’t actively following your competitors.

Your competitor is constantly plotting their next move. 

When it comes to competitive intelligence, be proactive rather than reactive. Keep track of your competitors’ social, mobile, and desktop spending with competitive intelligence.

4. Not Acknowledging Competitor Mistakes

By ignoring your competitors’ blunders, you’re increasing your chances of committing the same ones. 

Someone may have already tried out your next great idea. 

To see how a campaign performed, use competitive analysis. And if it didn’t work for your opponents, it’s unlikely that it will work for you.

When you use actionable insights correctly, you can figure out where your competitors went wrong and use that information to improve your campaign. When it comes to deciding on ad placement, this strategy is really useful.

It is necessary to take into account the failures of others in the marketplace. When you know what mistakes have previously been made by one or more companies, you are less likely to make them yourself. 

Taking notes on other people’s blunders is useful in almost every situation.

5. Not being able to come up with actionable conclusions

Finally, keep in mind that not all findings are applicable. Rather than simply making objective assertions about the condition of your campaign, dig a little deeper and see what you can do with your findings. 

Are they advising you to make a change? Have they identified a winning method that you’ll need to replicate or expand? 

You need more than simply realizations towards your ultimate goal: you need concrete takeaways.

A lot of energy is wasted when competitive research is not used to strategy effectively. It comes in the form of resources required to obtain competitive data, extract signals from noise, summarise the relevance of important discoveries, and develop meaningful analytical reports.

We offer several ways for ensuring the immediate application of study findings, but the most basic ones are as follows:

• Using research to bridge the gaps in your knowledge: While it may appear counterintuitive, your competition landscape analyses should always be prioritized to match with the strategic decisions for which you are most blind.

• Creating a consistent schedule for competitive research that other members of the company can rely on: This enables them to organize decision-making procedures based on the information you provide.

Keeping track of data: A good competitive analysis necessitates wrangling data from a vast number of dynamic factors. Vaizle, for example, can assist you in staying on top of things by tracking crucial data sources.

6. Strengths are misunderstood as competitive advantages

Another major issue in competitive landscape analysis is when businesses mix up their strengths (what you excel at) with their competitive advantages (things your customers want from you that separate you from the competition). 

It can be difficult to tell the difference between the two without taking into account the customer’s point of view.

A review of popular topics in your competitors’ marketing, for example, may lead you to conclude that you should emphasize the benefits of your creative product design. 

If everyone else is talking about it and you have a cutting-edge product, making innovation a core pillar of your content strategy may seem like a no-brainer.

However, it’s critical to base this decision on feedback from customers: is innovation a crucial trait they’re looking for in a supplier? Or do they value your excellent customer service and account management more?

While emphasizing your strengths is important, your competitive landscape research should take into account broader market perspectives to fully comprehend your genuine advantages. 

Speaking with salespeople or even direct customers will help you root your assumptions in the reality of what you do well in the marketplace. 

From there, you can make sure that your value propositions are distinct when compared to the competition, helping you to stand out from the many cookie-cutter pitches.

7. Not recognizing the accomplishments of your competitors

There will be competitors as long as the market exists. 

If you want to gain an advantage over your competition, you must keep track of them. It’s irresponsible to degrade a competitor by failing to maintain track of their activities and performance. 

You must be objective in your approach and determine their strengths. You must be willing to recognize that others may be performing better than you in terms of creating compelling material, they might have better content strategy or likewise. Maybe they’re marketing their products/services more effectively. 

Their presence on social media may be more relevant than yours. Whatever it is, you must retain an open mind to consider and implement changes whenever and wherever they are required.

8. Relying on old data to appraise your current situation

Most firms’ first instinct, especially when doing social media SWOT assessments, is to focus on what they’ve learned through previous attempts to build mission statements or grasp what customers like best about doing business with them. 

But, given your current market situation, how frequently do you reassess these understandings? Year after year or quarter after quarter, what truths have you held on to and passed down? Is the input you’ve received from long-term consumers applicable to your new target audiences as well?

Irrespective of what you’ve desired to be or what you’ve heard in the field in the past, a genuinely effective competitive landscape study discards any notions about who your firm is.

You can honestly examine your competitors’ strategies and discover your genuine niche in the industry as it stands today by taking a blank slate approach.

9. A narrowed focus on social media

There are now more advertising options on social media platforms than ever before. You miss out on opportunities when your competitive intelligence emphasis is too narrow.

Competitive data on businesses that use the same social networks is crucial for creating successful campaigns. 

However, if your competitors are crushing it on Facebook while you are focusing solely on Twitter, you may be missing out on an opportunity to advertise your brand to a new audience. 

Use Competitive Analysis for insight and data on the entire social media ecosystem.

Take Wendy’s, for example, the fast-food business has been teasing McDonald’s on Twitter for quite some time, and customers are loving it (no pun intended). Wendy’s took advantage of real-time competition monitoring by responding to McDonald’s new fresh beef marketing on Twitter with amusing answers.

While conducting your initial brand research, keep track of the social platforms where your competitors are most engaged. This will assist you in determining where to concentrate your competitive intelligence efforts and find prospective market possibilities. You can also use a social media competitor analysis tool like Vaizle. It can save your time and give you the best findings. 

Conclusion

These are some of the most common analysis errors made by marketers, but they aren’t the only ones. Because the data accessible to marketers today is so extensive and diverse, even professional analysts occasionally make erroneous judgments and exclusions.

With the right competitive analysis tools, you may improve your brand’s distinction.

Competitive analysis, when managed properly, may help you avoid market risks, find new growth possibilities, build market-aligned strategies, and increase revenue for your company.

During your competitive study, learn how your competitors use social media networks and how they use them in their marketing plans. Analyzing your competitors’ social media profiles allows you to see how effective they are and build a responding strategy.

Are you prepared to defend and expand your market share with better competitor analysis?