What is a Competitive Analysis?
A competitive analysis is a process of identifying and evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors in your market. It helps you to understand the market landscape, identify opportunities, and develop a strategic plan to improve your competitive position.
How are Competitive Analyses Used?
Competitive analyses are used to gain a deeper understanding of the competition, identify potential threats, and develop strategies to gain a competitive advantage. They can be used to inform business decisions, such as product development, marketing, and pricing strategies.
What is Included in a Competitive Analysis?
A competitive analysis typically includes an evaluation of your competitors' products, pricing, marketing strategies, distribution channels, and customer base. It may also include an assessment of their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT analysis) and a comparison of their performance metrics with your own.
What are the Benefits of a Competitive Analysis?
The benefits of a competitive analysis include gaining a deeper understanding of the market and competition, identifying opportunities and threats, developing a competitive strategy, improving product development, refining marketing strategies, and enhancing customer experience.
5 Steps to Creating a Competitive Analysis
Do Your Research
What keywords would people search to find your business? Do a search and note the other business that rank for the same keywords. Pull their homepages, social media pages, brochures, or any other info they have and compile it into a company profile for each competitor you find.
Identify Their Target Audiences
Once you have compiled a list of all your competitors and have created their company profiles, now it’s time to identify their audiences. Who are they trying to sell to? Age? Profession? Company size? Identifying their target audience will determine whether or not you’re targeting the same market.
Find Their Strengths and Weaknesses
Take a quick look into how their product works and start to identify what is really good about it and what needs to be improved. Is their whole product amazing, but their home page is difficult to navigate? Is the product buggy and slow, but they have very affordable pricing? Identify their strengths and weaknesses to understand how they’re running their business.
Pricing
Look at the pricing for each company. This step is simple and should give you an idea of where to price your product and how your pricing model will fit in to the industry standard.
Identify Your Competitive Position
Now that you have done all the research and analytics, it’s time to understand where your company fits into the market. Cross reference who your target audience is, what your strengths and weaknesses are, and your pricing to iterate accordingly so that you can beat out your competition.
Frequently Asked Questions About Competitive Analyses
How often should you conduct a competitive analysis?
It depends on your industry and market. Some industries may require more frequent analyses due to rapidly changing market conditions or frequent competitor movements, while others may not need to be analyzed as frequently.
How can I use a competitive analysis to improve my business?
You can use a competitive analysis to inform business decisions, such as product development, pricing strategies, marketing tactics, and customer service improvements. By understanding your competition and identifying opportunities, you can develop a competitive advantage and improve your overall business performance.
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