Pressure to come up with innovative goods and services that stand out from the competition in order to develop a successful business is ever increasing.
However, in order to build those one-of-a-kind offerings, you must first understand who your competitors are and what they are delivering to the market.
When you’re in a competitive market, it’s critical to conduct this type of analysis. This is because it is so easy to fall behind in terms of marketing and product development. Analyzing your current position in your competitive market will provide you with a roadmap for where you need to go.
While you may not have the funds to employ a professional market intelligence organization, simple research may teach you a lot about the competition.
Don’t wait for someone else to do it. Hire yourself and start calling the shots.
Here are five stages to conducting your own competitive analysis:
Let’s discuss these stages in detail:
A competitor is someone who sells a similar product to the same market segments as you. As a result, a business that sells wine could coexist alongside another company that sells wine.
How is it possible?
The companies can serve various types of customers: one may cater to international corporations, while the other sells to small businesses.
In general, there are three sorts of competitors:
Before you begin comparing your product to others, you must first determine who your competitors are. You can investigate and identify your competition using a variety of approaches.
After you’ve identified your top competitors, you’ll want to learn everything you can about them.
You could try to compile the following data on your competitors:
Evaluate and compare their products and services to your own, preferably by acquiring and trying them out.
What’s the quality like? What features do you find appealing or objectionable? What are their vendors’ names? Is it responsive to the desires of customers?
What are the prices for their products and services? Is there a difference in price between channel partners and customers? What is their policy on discounts? Can you give me an estimate of their budget?
Examine the websites, product documentation, brochures, and catalogs of your competitors. Visit them at trade fairs and follow them on social media.
What are the markets they’re aiming for? What is their one-of-a-kind selling point?
Get feedback from customers, suppliers, and distributors. What information do they have about your competitors?
What are their thoughts on the company’s products, marketing, and sales techniques, and customer service?
You can compare your competitors’ performance to your own by creating a written evaluation of them.
You might make a list of your competitors and write down their advantages and disadvantages.
Is it due to their location that they are so popular? Visibility?
What about the caliber of their personnel? Are their prices excessively high? Is their product missing a crucial feature that your target buyers want?
This study will show you how to adjust your plan to counter their strong points while leveraging their shortcomings.
A SWOT analysis helps to determine your advantages, disadvantages, opportunities, and threats. This research will reveal your service gaps and help you plan your product strategy for the future.
This step teaches you how to:
Then, compare the reach of your competitors’ websites to that of your own and others in your sector. Collect information on how people interact with other websites. This information includes:
By comparing the traffic and performance of their website you learn:
Examine your web presence in comparison to competitors by examining competitive keywords. Conduct a keyword analysis to determine which organic keywords are the most effective in driving traffic to their website. Examine the paid keywords they use to see what terms they are paying to promote.
This step teaches you how to:
A competitive analysis’ ultimate purpose is to better position your own product versus the competition. Turn your attention to your own brand or product once you’ve identified your competitors and what they’re doing.
What are some ways you do – or could do – things differently? What distinguishes you from the competition – and/or what sets you apart?
Return to your SWOT for inspiration, focusing on the “S” and “O” categories in particular. What have you learned, and what are some things you could try? Always remember to put your knowledge to good use.
It bears repeating: Once you’ve completed your work, you’ll most likely have an excellent playbook of what your competitors do and how they do it.
It’s time to dust off your white hat and remind yourself and your coworkers of sound business procedures. Ideate rather than imitate.
Competitive analyses are an excellent approach to learn about your competitors. You won’t know what to do next to build your business unless you look at what your competitors are doing. A few of these benefits are listed below.
A competition study will reveal loopholes in your market that you might otherwise be unaware of. This gap could be filled by the requirement for an app to deliver services that no one else does. Perhaps clients are requesting add-on services that aren’t too expensive to provide.
This market void may provide you with a competitive advantage.
A competitive analysis, like a market gap analysis, can help your company design new products. You would not have learned about these things otherwise. For example, a competitor may provide a more advanced product to customers than yours. Customers are dissatisfied with this competitor’s performance, according to consumer reviews. Because you know how vital excellent performance is to your consumers, you can incorporate these advances into your plan sooner rather than later.
A competition study might also help you spot a market trend toward something you haven’t considered yet. Perhaps all of your competitors are producing mobile apps or providing customized products.
Many things can fly under the radar in a hectic atmosphere, but a competitive landscape study can bring them to light. Spending time each quarter looking at competitors can help you stay competitive.
Examining the frequency of social media posts and blog articles, email campaigns, and competitors’ overall marketing methods might provide you with new ideas. You may not have considered video marketing, but your primary competition is seeing a lot of success with it. Perhaps your social media posts are too dull, and your customers prefer more lively content. Because each company is unique, their marketing will be as well, but you can learn from your competition.
Finally, your current price strategy may be ideal for you. However, adopting a subscription plan or a monthly offer may be the path taken by all of your competitors. You have the option of sticking with your present price approach or switching to a more widely acknowledged pricing method.
You now know how to do a competition analysis in easy stages and why it’s critical for your brand.
You may also opt for our easy-on-pocket yet highly-effective competitive analysis tool, Vaizle to aid in your research. Using Vaizle, you can easily conduct competitive analysis in just a few clicks for any social media platform like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter & more.
Request a demo from our expert to get started on your thorough competitive analysis right away.
Vaizle helps you to set strategic goals based on an appropriate industry baseline that takes into account your primary competitors and market leaders.
Vaizle’s Competitor Analysis & Benchmarking will give your social media initiatives industry-specific context. Determine your strategic goals and evaluate your performance using real-time metrics.
Arushi is a proficient SEO and ASO specialist with a 5-year track record working for B2B and B2C organizations. Currently, she is heading SEO strategy for Vaizle and helping businesses improve their online presence. A mountain girl at heart, she likes to recharge her creative abilities by taking long walks and listening to podcasts.
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