Competitor analysis is a great way to inspire and sharpen your marketing mindset. It gets you away from working IN the business into working ON the business. You are opening your mind to the worldview of the customer rather looking out into the world only from your own business perspective.
Competitor analysis and marketing is an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of both current and potential competitors. A SWOT analysis can be carried out which measures a competitor’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. This can give the company an indication as to what areas to focus on to give the greatest advantage over the competitors.
Here is a handy tool to map your key observations about your competitors to track where they are performing (or not) and what opportunities or threats that then presents for YOUR organisation.
| Marketing Tool | Competitors | Your Organisation | ||
| Strengths | Weakness | Opportunity | Threat | |
| Product | ||||
| Price | ||||
| Place | ||||
| Promotion | ||||
| People | ||||
| Process | ||||
Some key questions to consider was conducting competitor research include:
Product:
What are they offering?
How do they bundle their products or services?
What language do they use to convince people to buy?
Price:
How much does it cost?
What are they offering under each pricing band?
Place:
Do they have a physical location?
Where are they selling online?
Is there anything about where they sell that makes them standout?
Promotion:
What marketing tools do they use? How did they advertise?
What are their top 3 messages?
Where are they investing in their brand?
Social Media:
What social media platforms are they leveraging?
What type of content do they promote?
How often do they post content?
What type of consumers are following them?
What other brands do their followers interact with?
Is their social media strategy successful?
What type of feedback or interaction do they get from their followers?
People:
Do they have people involved in their business that make them different?
Process:
Is there something in the way they deliver their product/service that makes them different?
