Effective competitor benchmarking
- Determine what aspects you want to compare with your competitors: pricing, product features, marketing strategies, customer service, market share etc. Agree on relevant KPIs.
- Identify primary direct, indirect and pesky disruptor competitors. Don’t go for the obvious every time.
- Gather information from diverse sources. From websites, reports, social media, reviews and talking to them.
- Do a proper SWOT analysis to understand their advantages and disadvantages and identify areas where you can win.
- Identify their successful strategies and best practices. Assess how they position their products, engage with customers, and what they say to customers.
- Analyse insights to identify market gaps for you to fill. That untapped segment features their widget lacks or new marketing channel to explore.
- You can’t stay updated on industry changes and competitors’ strategies if you don’t keep looking and analysing. So keep doing it.
- Never use it just to copy what your competitors are doing. It’s about gaining insights and learning from the competition to be better than them.
Regular benchmarking ensures your insight doesn’t rapidly become hindsight.
Competitor benchmarking evaluates and compares performance, products, services, and practices against your competitors. The purpose of competitor benchmarking is to gain insights into the strengths and weaknesses of the competition. Identify areas where you can improve your competitive advantage. Here’s another interesting article on How to Benchmark Your Competitors.
Here is another related article which may be of interest:
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