Competition drives entrepreneurs and if you are looking to stand up and stand firm against your rivals, competitor analysis can be the way forward.
You need to pull up your socks and seek as much knowledge about your close challengers as possible.
Competitor analysis is defined as a business strategy used to identify existing as well as new competitors in the market.
Once identified, this process allows you to research your competitor’s products, services, sales, and marketing strategies.
Here are 5 steps to improve your competitor analysis strategies and upscale your business:
1. Identify your top competitors
- You can start by creating a small list of six to 10 competitors using Google search results and Alexa rankings.
- Try including businesses that operate in your location, sell similar or identical products, share the same target audience, etc.
- You can also float a survey asking your users about similar brands they engage with other than you. This survey can be a Google Form or a well-drafted email as well.
2. Create a competitor analysis template
- Creating a template will help you jot down various criteria for comparing your brand to others.
- The comparison categories that you certainly need to include are as follows—product range, pricing structure, lead generation sources, marketing channels, and offers/discounts to new customers.
- For eg. You can study how trends affect marketing strategies in companies like Zomato, Facebook, Dunzo, etc.
3. Divide competitors into primary and secondary
- Primary competitors are your company’s direct competition as they sell similar products/services to a common audience.
- Secondary competitors, on the other hand, sell identical products but to a different audience.
- For eg. If you have an e-commerce site that sells Headphones, you can tap your research into other musical markets as well like Instruments, sound systems, etc.
4. Capture data using the right tools
- Once you have made the list, it is time to dig into the right data using tools and platforms such as Facebook Audience Insights, Alexa, and BuzzSumo.
5. Analyze gained data
- They say that the devil is in the details.
- This captured data will help you get a clearer picture of your position in the market.
- You can also perform a SWOT analysis to identify your top Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.
Apart from this, you should stop having second thoughts about researching rival companies. The denial of this can cause a lot of unsolvable problem statements for the vision of your enterprise. Here’s the link to the article: https://www.allbusiness.com/
Also, we are coming up with a free Q&A for all your entrepreneurial questions, so head over to this link and ask our experts any 3 questions to get a chance for a one-on-one with them: https://sncoglobal.com/#q&a
