Every business needs to be noticed, not necessarily in a flashy and eye-catching manner, but preferably as an established brand in their area of expertise. There’s always a comparable product or service on the market, so it’s important to understand your competition.

What is it that your business can offer those other companies do not? What are the features that make your service or product distinct from others? What, more importantly, can you learn from your competition?

Do a competitive analysis

Ginni Rometty, the former CEO of IBM, said, “You’ve got to keep reinventing. You’ll have new competitors. You’ll have new customers all around you.”

An analysis of competition is intended to evaluate the weaknesses and strengths of competitors and uncover weaknesses in the market. This article will help you learn how to conduct a competitive analysis.

So, without further delay, Let’s get started.

What is competitive research?

The process of conducting competitive research involves gathering and analyzing data about your business. It can help you comprehend your strengths and weaknesses. The most effective competitive research is thorough. It analyzes your competition’s marketing strategies, competitive advantages, and content strategy.

The purpose of conducting competitive research is to determine what your competition is up to and what threat they could pose to your company. This way, you can develop more informed marketing strategies and even change your strategy to counter the threats.

You must do a competitive analysis if you’re serious about the longevity of your company. If you don’t, your competitors could get ahead of you and reduce your market share.

Enhance marketing processes

Your customers purchase from you because your offer meets their requirements. If they are more loyal to your competitors than to you, that indicates that your competitor’s product, service, or marketing is superior.

It’s important to comprehend how shoppers shop and why customers purchase the products you sell. You’re more likely to get involved in pricing and convenience battles without competitive analysis.

Market research will help you understand the marketing big picture. You’ll know what motivates buyers to buy and why they may choose other products. The information about your competitors will inform your next marketing strategy.

Determine your goal

What is the reason you are conducting your analysis of competitors? What are your objectives? The answer to these questions could change as time passes. Yes, the main purpose will remain the same: trying to understand your competition and how you can compare. You may have goals that change based on the season and the current goals in business.

Some examples include:

• New product launch
• Designing a new marketing campaign
• Expanding into a new market
• Gaining market share over a specific competitor

Reaching new target audiences

Understanding the motivations of your analysis of competition will determine the information you collect and the information you will use in the future.

Identify Competitors

Before you can evaluate your competition, you must know who they are. If you’re beginning from scratch, Google is your friend. Look them up…

The terms you use should describe your business in a straightforward manner and with an option for a geographic modifier.

The keywords you use for SEO (these could differ from the prior search if your management team decided not to use the most popular keywords) and articles of the type that discuss the basics of your business.

If you’re lucky, you’ll take note of the top results in advertising. These ads are from businesses that are targeting the same regions as you.

The next stop is company reference sites like Crunchbase and Owler, which offer different levels of access for free. Their information is more dependable for bigger corporations, so choose a significant competitor from your initial research. You can then examine the list of competitors. Then, you can examine the competitors using a branching method.

Funding

Knowing what, when, and where your competitions received funding may be crucial, especially when you are planning to raise capital for yourself. This will provide you with an accurate estimate of the funding you will likely receive.

In addition, Venture capitalists (VCs) generally invest in a single company within a particular sector to ensure that they don’t reduce their investments. Notice that a VCs name is not present in your competition’s financial history. They could be a great candidate to consider: they have missed the opportunity to partner with a successful competitor, but now they have a chance to invest in an emerging company in the field (you!).

Review your own business

It’s recommended to begin with your own business by conducting a SWOT analysis to determine your strengths and weaknesses and external threats and opportunities.

An analysis of SWOT can be an important base to help determine the direction to take with your analysis of competitive factors.

Review competitors’ products

The next phase of competitive research is to conduct a competitive analysis of products. This is an in-depth analysis of competitors’ products to determine their strengths and weaknesses.

If you are a business founder starting up a small business, you must determine if your product can be successful. Product analysis gives you information that can be used to develop new products. Product analysis can help you determine if your existing products can benefit customers. Feedback from customers about competitor products can assist you in identifying and differentiating your product.

The most straightforward competitor analysis method is to purchase a competitor’s product. It puts you in the customer’s shoes, which will help you comprehend their requirements. Go to all product pages on your competition’s websites and read the descriptions. Examine the features and advantages associated with their item. Find the most appealing characteristics of their product, and discover what their customers might not enjoy.

Conclusion

In this digital age, we have more information at our disposal than we ever had before. However, if you’re not sure how to make use of that data no matter how much you have, once you’ve completed your research using the templates for the competitive analysis you prefer it’s time to take action with it. Competitive analysis will reveal what opportunities you have to gain market share from your competition, but it’s your responsibility to do something about it.