Competitive analysis find out the best way to perform ,how it can help you improve your products or services.
- Perform routine competitor analysis to understand your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses and identify market gaps.
- A competitive analysis can help you improve your product or service, better serve your target audience, and increase your profits.
It is important to analyse your competition at different stages of your business to ensure that you provide best product for right price for your customer. Learn more about what a competitor analysis is, why doing it regularly can help your business succeed, and the seven-step process for doing it.
What is a competitor analysis?
This is a process of identifying companies in your market that offer similar products. Moreover a good competitive analysis will help you see your business and your competitors through the eyes of your customers to identify areas for improvement
Why is the competitor analysis is Essential?
It’s important to perform routine competitor analyses throughout your business lifecycle to stay up-to-date with market trends and product offerings. Hence this can reveal relevant information about market saturation, business opportunities, and industry best practices.
It is also important to know how your customers perceive you compared to your competitors. This will give you a better idea of what services are currently available to your target customers and what areas are being overlooked.
An analysis of the competition is important for both attack and defence. Benchmarking your business against your competitors shows you where you can improve and where you excel. Similarly it can even help you identify a new niche you can tap into.
What are the benefits ?
You can adjust your processes to better serve your target market and increase your profits. It can also show you new strategic opportunities to improve your products or services and grow your business.
Once you’ve done the analysis, routine scans will reveal market trends to follow and new players to watch. It will also help reveal who your current competitors are at every stage of the business. Be sure to keep your analytics up to date.
What should be included in a competitor analysis?
Performing a general SWOT analysis and a PEST analysis is a good starting point, but there are several other things to consider in a competitive analysis. It’s important to include as much information as possible to create an accurate assessment of how your business compares to others. You will need to collect information about potential competitors and their characteristics, prices, quality of service, strengths and weaknesses.
Drawing on his experience in creating a competitive analysis, Schacherbauer has compiled a list of the top 10 components that any competitive analysis should include:
1.Feature Matrix: Find all features of each direct competitor’s product or service. Record this in a competitor information spreadsheet to visualize how companies compare to each other.
2.Market Share Percentage: This identifies your main competitors in your market. Don’t rule out larger competitors entirely, as they have a lot to teach you about being successful in your industry. Instead, practice the 80/20 rule: 80% direct competitors (companies with similar sized market shares) and 20% major competitors.
3.Pricing – Identify how much your competitors charge and where they fall on the quantity versus quality spectrum.
4.Marketing: What type of marketing strategy does each competitor employ? Examine competing websites, social media presence, type of events they sponsor, SEO strategies, taglines, and ongoing marketing campaigns.
5.Differentiators: What makes your competitors unique and what are their best qualities?
6.Strengths: Identify what your competitors are doing well and what is working for them. Do the reviews indicate they have a superior product? Do they have a high notoriety?
7.Weaknesses: Do they have a weak social media strategy? Do you have an online store?
8.Geography – Are they brick-and-mortar businesses or is most of their business done online?
9.Culture: This will assess your competitors’ goals, employee satisfaction. As well as and company culture. Are they the type of company that announces the year they were founded or are they modern start-ups?
10.Customer reviews – Analyse your competitors’ customer reviews. With advantages and disadvantages. In a 5-star system, see 5-star, 3-star, and 1-star reviews.
“Document existing threats that could negatively impact your business, and document opportunities that you could take advantage of better than your competitors,” Rovner said.
Key Takeaways: Include competitor information such as features, market share percentage, pricing, marketing strategy, differentiators, strengths, weaknesses, geography, culture, and reviews in your analysis client.
Here are the steps to write a Competitive Analysis:
When writing a competitive analysis, it is important to be as objective and honest as possible. Therefore, intentionally underestimating the strength or success of your competitors will do you a disservice by producing inaccurate results.
Below is Rovner’s seven-step process for conducting a competitive analysis:
1.Identify the products or services you want to review
2.Identify competitors for these products or services.
3.Use a group, if possible, to get a variety of opinions on competing products or services.
4.Document your research in a written analysis. This may vary by product or service, but often includes comparison charts, graphics, and written text. Make sure your document is substantial and actionable, but not so long that no one reads it.
5.Identify areas to improve your own competitiveness. For example, could you improve the quality of your products or services by changing a feature, reduce the price of your products or services to be more competitive, or develop a new product or service that addresses the area of improvement?
6.Make any improvements it deems appropriate or necessary.
7.Measure your sales and profits against the changes you made to determine if they were successful.
In Conclusion ,use your new knowledge to stand out from the competition and better serve your customers. Additionally daily perform competitive analysis to monitor market supply and increase your competitive intelligence.
Key Point: To write a competitive analysis, list the product or service you want to evaluate, Moreover identify and research your competitors, document your research, evaluate their results, and identify ways to improve your competitiveness.