How to handle competitors with competitive analysis
There are dozens of competitors fighting for your customer’s money. Wouldn’t it be great to look into their minds? Well, you can will a little thought, lateral thinking and analysis. And if you believe your startup has no rivals, reconsider starting up or look harder. Your customers always have an alternative solution in mind, even if that means doing the work themselves. This article asks how to handle competitors with competitive analysis.
Having competitor intelligence will provide you with a clear picture of where you stand in the marketplace and what you must do to attract new customer devotion.
Competitive intelligence is defined as?
Competitive intelligence is the competitive analysis process of gaining critical information about your industry’s products, customers, and competitors.
You can find out about the competition by examining the following:
- Spending money on marketing before you improve your marketing return on investment will improve your marketing performance.
- Gathering competitive intelligence is finding clues to position your startup for high growth.
What Are the Most Efficient Ways to Gain Competitive Intelligence?
Competitive research is valuable for ensuring you have the information you need to support your strategy. The methods you should use to create your competitor analysis depend on your goals.
- First, list out all the competitors you know about.
- Second, use review websites like G2 Crowd and TrustRadius to find competitors you may have missed.
- Finally, question your current and potential customers to determine what solutions they have used in the past.
Thinking you can forego the final step of talking to customers is a mistake. Why? Because you know your competitors are already asking them. Plus, review sites can contain incorrect information. Misinformation and opinion of former employees who left under a cloud.
Talk to your customers
The first thing to keep in mind is that it’s the customer who buys your product. And unless a competitive analysis helps you acquire more customers, it isn’t worth much and is a waste of time. Entrepreneurs often fail to recognise 30-40% of their competitors because they don’t talk to their customers.
Customers already know what solutions they use to solve the problem your tool alleviates. And you might miss out on up-and-coming products that your customer already knows about. When conducting customer discovery interviews or customer experience interviews, you should perform a competitive analysis.
Swim in a small pool first
Group your competitors into different market niches after you’ve found them. Large markets often have many niches. Choose how to segment the market, but be sure to segment in a manner that allows your customers to make a purchase. For example, we may categorise web Open Banking Api based on whether they emphasise privacy, security or ease of use. You can verify your market by keyword research and see if people are searching for your product or service.
It is easier to conquer a small market and afterwards expand into a large one than to dominate the entire market at once. So choose which niche to target once you’ve identified the primary market segments. It
allows you to focus on the battles you can win again and again.
Concentrate on serving the smallest viable market. Once you become the biggest fish in the pond, move to a larger pond. Wash, rinse, and repeat until you’re the 2-tonne elephant in the room no one can ignore.
Once you’ve decided on a niche, identify what characteristics are essential to your customers.
What do they think is important?
Finding out what your competitors think is important to their customers is easy. These features will most likely be listed on the pricing page on their website.
You should create a spreadsheet to list all your product’s features, even if some are unnecessary. Then mark down which companies provide which features and how much of each they offer where relevant.
Before automating the data-gathering process, speak to your clients to discover what features they value the most and the least. Finding out what features your audience loves is the last thing you want to do.
For every feature they valued the most, they received +1 point, and for every feature they valued the least, they received -1 point. Once you have added up the points, you will discover which features are most important to your customers. In the example above, the customers preferred clovers to eggplants. And satisfaction wasn’t a purchasing factor. Of course, you will require more information before you eliminate or add new features. You will also examine how well your competitors are marketing using various channels.
What are the sources of competitive intelligence?
Looking at competitor websites and talking to customers is an easy way to analyse them. You can also check review sites, blogs, and customer opinions on social media for information.
Checking out a competitor’s site is essential because it allows you to compare your activities with those of your competitors. Your competitors’ levels of success can be determined by talking to your customers. It’s important to note that some review sites compensate users for their opinions; unfortunately, this practice can lead to false evaluations.
Review and promote
It’s important to comprehend how affiliate blogs and review websites decide which items to review and promote. Other areas are also excellent sources for competitive insight, but finding the stuff you need can take time. Reddit communities (known as subreddits) are excellent sources of competitor intelligence. Twitter, Quora, Facebook groups, and Slack are all examples of social networks less influenced by monetary compensation.
What is competitive intelligence?
Competitive intelligence is the finding & critical analysis of information to make sense of what’s happening & why. Predict what’s going to happen & give the options to control the outcome. The insight to create more certainty & competitive advantage.
How to handle competitors with social media
Using social media to research your customers can lead you to build the wrong product because the people you find may not represent your target audience. In addition, the information you see is more likely to be out-of-date. And sometimes, competitors can try and send you down the wrong path. Misinformation is a rarely used but potent competitive intelligence tool.
After Competitor Analysis?
You have finished your competitive analysis once you are ready to implement two powerful methods to ramp up your growth. While finding your optimal growth channels is critical, position your startup first. Then, when you are ready to promote your business, you will have a clear and compelling reason for customers to choose your product over the competition.
How to handle competitors with competitive analysis
In conclusion, understanding your competitors is an important factor in staying ahead in the fast-paced business world. By keeping a pulse on their strategies and offerings, you can better position yourself to succeed. However, finding ways to differentiate your product or service from theirs is just as important. Innovative and creative thinking can give you an edge, allowing you to remain competitive and attract customers.
