What is a Competitive Market Analysis?
A competitive market analysis is a strategy that involves researching your competitors to learn about their products, pricing, marketing approaches, sales tactics, and strengths/weaknesses. Understanding where your competitors stand can help you to effectively tailor your business strategies and grow market share within your industry. If one of your competitors is doing exceptionally well, learn from them and apply that knowledge to help your brand stay relevant.
Unique Value Proposition
Having an in-depth understanding of your competitors services or products enables you to pinpoint
your brand’s unique value proposition. Plus, reading reviews on your competitors can help identify areas where they are falling short on. As a result, your brand can step up to the plate and ensure those needs are met when their customers come to you.
Research
Research your competitors and the products or services they offer. Find out their pricing and learn about their selling tactics, content strategy, and engagement on social media platforms. Differentiate between direct and indirect competitors. Direct, being those that offer similar services or products to the same target market as you. Indirect, refers to brands that might provide different services and products to the same target market as yours. Although they are different, they might serve a similar purpose. An example of an indirect competitor for the gym GoodLife Fitness could be a company that sells dumbbells and home workout equipment. While GoodLife is selling a service, the latter is selling a product, but both companies appeal to similar target audiences.
Identifying who your indirect competitors are provides a comprehensive overview of the industry landscape. Although, direct competitors, as the name suggests, provide a more direct threat to your brand, and therefore, should be at the forefront of your focus.
Sales Tactics
Understanding your competitors’ sales tactics comes from learning about the channels they sell through, and promotions or discounts that they regularly host. If they are a publicly owned company, you can find out their annual revenue through their annual report online.
Incorporate an additional field on your company’s lead generation form for prospects to write their previous provider. This can help you figure out why they switched. If they share what they didn’t like about their old service, you can make sure your company doesn’t make the same mistakes.
Pricing
If your prices are steeper than industry standards, your sales team needs to be able to persuasively articulate the value of your product or service and why it’s worth paying said price. Alternatively, if your brand decides to offer lower prices, be sure to uniquely position yourself as the go-to for those who can’t afford excessive rates.
Benefits
If your competitors offer referral discounts, loyalty programs, or free trials, and it seems to be working, then you might want to look into something similar for your own brand to lure and retain customers.
Marketing Tactics
Depending on the product or service, you’ll want to check if your competitor has their media kit posted, if they have press releases, blogs, whitepapers, webinars, events, or e-books. Analyze the content that they provide for free to the public. Determine how often they post this content and if their readers are gaining anything valuable from it. Is the company positioning themselves as a thought leader? You’ll know this is the case if the quality of the content is exceptional. That means, no spelling mistakes, easy readability, engaging imagery, catchy headlines, and in-depth content that thoroughly explains concepts and provides industry expertise.
You will want to analyze their social media platforms and their social media strategy. Identify what is working and what isn’t. Take note of all the channels they use and how frequently they post. Is the content aesthetic for the purpose of promoting brand awareness? Or does their content drive their prospect to specific landing pages or blogs? Are they creating original content or curating other people’s content?
Engagement
Find out if their target audience is engaging with the content they post. Review the likes and comments on their social platforms to uncover how people are reacting to their content. View their Google Reviews and determine the reasons customers are staying or leaving.
Technology & Tools
Job listings typically mention the tools and technology expectations for candidates to be considered for the position. Viewing your competitors job listings can be a tactic to find out the technology that they use so that your brand can operate on the same playing field.
SWOT Analysis
Finally, you will want to create a SWOT analysis, which is a technique to identify your competitors’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Opportunities can be the direction of consumer preferences, new software’s or CRM’s to utilize. Ultimately, SWOTs allow you to discover where your brand needs improvement and where there may be gaps in the market.
Jackie Marson | Staff Writer
