Start Competitive Analysis Today With These Easy Steps

by Octopus Intelligence Octopus Competitive Intelligence

Start Competitive Analysis today with these easy steps

You may feel that your market is getting more and more competitive. It’s the usual suspects. The startups and established brands thinking they can take a piece of your market. This article how to start Competitive Analysis today with these easy steps.

The speed of change in your market is getting faster and faster. Now more than ever, you have to differentiate yourself from the rest. You have to understand your competitive landscape.

1. Understand you must differentiate

Now more than ever, you must differentiate your value proposition. You and all your teams have to you know your competitive landscape. From who your key competitors are to how they compare with each other.

What is Competitive Analysis?

Competitive Analysis determines the attractiveness, customers, competitors and the dynamics of a particular market within a specific industry sector. Develops an understanding of the relationship between supply and demand, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats for your product or service to enable you to make more informed decisions about potential marketing strategies.

Competitive Analysis helps you understand whom you’re competing against. And where each company stands, and how you compare to them.

2. Understand the basics

Analysis needs to focus on each key competitor financial stability, growth and profitability. To understand if their performance is above or below expectations. The influence they have on the market. And their marketing value proposition and messaging.

Competitive Analysis can start with the basic and financial information. Start by answering the following questions:

When were they founded? Split the established players with mid-market and new start players
How many people work for them?
How well funded are they? Where did they raise the funding?
How long have they traded?
What’s their annual revenue?
What are their profits?
Their revenue per employee?
And many more

Answers to these questions will provide you with a foundation to create the Analysis. At a minimum, it’s essential to differentiate between firmly established players and startups. Pay attention to which competitors are accumulating funding at high rates. The number of employees your competitors have is interesting. Their funding history and revenues can be important, but they will not give you the whole story.

4. Market positioning and messaging

Take a look at how each competitor positions themselves in your market. Determine what their value proposition is. Understand what value the competitor brings to the market. And how your competitor articulates their position within your mutual target audience. Start by answering these questions:

How do they position themselves?
What do they say to their prospective customers?
What messages do they articulate to the market?
Does it make them unique?
What makes them better than you?

Companies tend to keep their values for the long term. They may change their products, marketing and message, but their values tend to stay the same. Changes to values could indicate a systemic shift within the organisation. Understanding their values and messages will allow you to anticipate strategic change. It will also keep you on your toes, so your own message doesn’t become boring.

What is Competitive Analysis?

Competitive Analysis determines the attractiveness, customers, competitors and the dynamics of a particular market within a specific industry sector. Develops an understanding of the relationship between supply and demand, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats for your product or service to enable you to make more informed decisions about potential marketing strategies.
Competitive Analysis helps you understand whom you’re competing against. And where each company stands, and how you compare to them.

5. Market reach and influence

Now see who’s attracted to them. An excellent place to start is to look at each competitor’s target audience. Answer the following questions. Remember to ask yourself what could I do to make myself more attractive than them:

How popular is their website?
How popular are they on social media?
What are they saying on social media?
How many followers do they have?
And how engaged are their followers?
What are they trying to portray on social media?
Are they seen as an industry authority?
Are they controlling the conversation?
How does their social media presence compare to their website popularity?
Which platforms do they publish content on?
How many followers do they have on the platforms?
Who is engaging with them by liking, sharing and commenting? What does the engagement tell you?

Ubersuggest (we are not affiliated) provides good data for a reasonable price. They are plenty more like Ahrefs and SemRush and many others who go into greater detail. But do you really need it? You are looking at their website for clues to beat them, not managing their website operations. But remember, the best insight you will find will be by looking yourself.

Conclusion