Under the pressure to accelerate innovation, can brands risk being blindsided by the competition? Adopt competitive analysis to boost your GTM success.
The market is a living ecosystem. It undergoes a drastic transformation every two to three years and remains in flux. From lifestyle changes to regulatory shifts, multiple factors influence this change.
There’s a constant to-and-fro that influences market movements. And it evolves and adapts according to these fluctuations. This has reiterated what businesses understand as growth and success. It’s no longer just brand positioning or delivering the best hands-on services in the industry.
Of course, these elements are crucial. But they are no longer the only focus. Because the competition is intense, your peers always remain eager to pounce on you as soon as they observe an opening. They’re willing to one-up you- that’s the reality of the market.
This is why brands must prioritize the whole picture.
Your marketing teams must remain vigilant, adaptive, and proactive. A new or established market entrant can easily plunder your market dominance, leading to a steady decline in market presence.
This is where competitive analysis becomes increasingly imperative, especially for your GTM success.
What is Competitive Analysis?
Competitive analysis is a comprehensive marketing tactic that involves undertaking thorough research, review, and assessment of industry competitors. This helps you evaluate how your competitors are navigating the market undercurrents and behaving in the digital and physical segments.
It’s technically a method to develop a response to a competitor’s actions.
By analyzing how your peers and counterparts are moving, your teams can curate strategies that’ll make you uniquely stand out and position your brand better.
Competitive analysis is a learning opportunity to understand the broader market movements. But you don’t do it once and forget it. The analysis must remain consistent to grasp any crucial shifts and trends amidst the existing patterns.
A significant chunk of competitive analysis deals with data points that outline what your competitors are doing differently (or better in some scenarios). Evaluating this provides a much granular view of your industry competitors and demonstrates the crevices you should truly focus on.
Why Conduct Competitive Analysis?
Some brands adapt to changes and catch up quickly, while others lag. Meanwhile, some remain as they are, somewhere in the middle- they react to market fluctuations on their own terms.
Shifting market dynamics demand a more proactive operational model.
Understanding the market competition and its effect.
Competition is an age-old notion, but the nitty-gritty remains the same. According to Michael E. Porter, when the market is on the offensive, overall profits suffer a loss.
And as the industry growth slows down, competition escalates as growth-led businesses attempt to knock over their counterparts to meet quarter-end objectives. Similarly, customers gripped by analysis paralysis switch between providers.
This is solely driven by a lack of differentiation among the offerings. Owing to this, brands compete on prices to attract the right customers.
Basically, this is how market competition impacts a single business. There’s a significant amount of push and pull.
The viable solution?
Learn how to survive.
This means that their business operations must shift 180 degrees to align with market conditions.
Here, competitive analysis can work like magic- to help brands shift from very unidirectional approaches to more adaptive and nuanced frameworks. But that’s not all.
Competitive analysis unearths a plethora of opportunities. And it’s simple-
Brands must align with the market environment to remain competitive and innovative.
How? By broadening your view of the competition across the market.
You’re just one of the many options amidst a very saturated market. Given the choices today, most customers face analysis paralysis, stuck in a hamster wheel. What is most prioritized are the adequacy of solutions and advantageous pricing models. These are what make some solutions desirable than others.
As a competitor, one of the primary focuses should be on delivering value that positions your brand as more beneficial than your competitors.
Benefits of Competitive Analysis: Revamp Your Business Strategies
A. Outline multiple perspectives to unlock diverse market insights.
The data points you collect and then analyze ensure that you aren’t entering a new market territory recklessly. And if you’re an established brand, it uncovers what may be hidden amidst the market noise.
By decoding the patterns of your market peers, you’re helping your brand stay ahead of the curve.
And you can gauge whether you want to be a part of the ongoing trend or take a more counterintuitive approach and stand out.
What can competitive analysis do for you?
With consistent research into the market, you can underscore:
- Competitors’ weaknesses and strengths- To uncover vulnerabilities, threats, and advantages.
- Market gaps signifying unmet needs in the market and underserved segments.
- How to position your efforts to compare with your peers in terms of brand recognition, market penetration, and size- Develop benchmarks that review the growth and performance of new initiatives.
- Latent industry trends in customer dynamics or market shifts- Join in or take a counter-approach.
- Identifying potential for alliances- Expand market reach by partnering with companies that sell complementary solutions.
Mapping out these aspects will offer a molecular insight into your brand’s capabilities and your competitors’. This way, you become privy to your own market position and can now decide whether you are supposed to play it safe or make a bold decision.
B. Spotlight the different threat levels within the industry- scope out competition.
Who are your competitors?
Competitive analysis in your GTM efforts can be different from one segment to another.
However, the primary step always remains the same: profiling the top brand competitors. It allows you to understand how these companies are behaving and what additional services they should offer. Through this, your brand can assess the threat level and rearrange the companies accordingly:
- Direct competitors- These companies sell to the same audience and offer solutions like yours.
- Potential competitors- These are prospective market entrants that offer complementary solutions or might plan to enter your market.
- Indirect competitors- The businesses that don’t sell the same solutions, but ones that can replace yours.
Assessing how many brands are under each level will allow your team to develop frameworks accordingly. Which competitors can you counter and which must you avoid? This information can help you outline an attack or a defense accordingly. Through this, you can additionally mitigate risks and navigate any potential undercurrents swiftly.
Most competitors wish to outshine you. And while rightfully so, your priority should be gauging your own benchmark performance to do better. Your competition is still your past performance, and competitive analysis is just the whole picture.
Setting benchmarks
All you’ve to do is breeze through the data points with the correct tools and software. And sift the latest details on these companies. For this, you can access:
- The Internet (simple) to search for companies in your geographical location with similar solutions.
- Industry reports, market research, and surveys to understand their intellectual position.
- Social media content to gauge what they’re currently focusing on, and the stands they take on ongoing business discussions.
- Industry experiences, such as product events, trade shows, and conferences, help us scope out those like you. And where they stand.
- Audience surveys to understand who their go-to choice is.
Here, you’re choosing how to cope best with the current market conditions or even influence the conditions in your favor. By unearthing what makes the industry tick from the very nexus.
This underscores the vitality of competitive analysis within your GTM strategy. It reveals what you’re already doing differently and what you can do better. It’s the whole point of executing competitive analysis across all business operations-
To learn the gaps in your roadmaps and your competitors. And then make alterations to differentiate yourself from your competitors across the same market segments.
How else will your target accounts gauge that you’re ‘the’ choice for them?
C. Assess gaps to understand where you stand compared to your peers.
With competitive analysis, you’re building a defense strategy against your competitors. And decoding the points where the forces are the weakest, especially where the brand reception is poor or there’s an unpenetrated market segment.
Market gaps present a window of opportunity.
This is the time and space where your team can learn from its lags as well as its lacks. Why did your competition not market to this specific segment? You can develop marketing tactics to help expand in this territory and position yourself as the only choice.
Doing this will solve a common snag diversification strategies face: What is the potential of your business?
Competitive analysis can help answer this.
You don’t merely react to market shifts, but proactively engage.
Competitive analysis is a measure of potential.
By studying where your competitors faltered, you can avoid similar risks and better gauge limitations on every front, from the broader market to your own organization.
Competitive analysis isn’t spying on your competitors or plagiarizing their strategies.
Instead, these data points will underline their and your market gaps.
You examine the competitor’s product benefits, quality, pricing, and customer service to highlight the cracks. And these cracks reveal the unmet demands the current offerings can’t satisfy.
For example, a software company conducted a competitive analysis to conclude that there are several high-quality project management tools. But the market lacks user-friendly and affordable ones for small businesses. This is a market gap.
And gauging this gap opens an opportunity to develop solutions tailored to that particular segment.
D. Predict competitors’ behavior to mitigate risks and take informed decisions.
Competitive edge isn’t just handed over; it must be earned. In the business world, it can make or break your brand and its growth. It’s obviously scary to watch other businesses build on your weaknesses. But competition is necessary to help your brand evolve and become a better version of itself.
With competitive analysis, you can gather more data and then leverage it to gain a competitive edge. This can be conferred as the ‘competitive-edge model.’
Adapting the competitive-edge model.
The model offers you a comprehensive and explicit picture of what’s happening with your business, your competitors, and the industry. It’s about looking at the big picture- how your brand is competing against others in the same industry and market segments.
This competitive model lets you anticipate scenarios that concern the future of your business, from how customers are likely to behave to the trends that could topple the market. This will allow you to tweak your plans of action today. This way, the high-stakes decisions are rooted in reality and informed by actual data.
A sure-shot way of mitigating risks- grasping what is going on within and around your brand. You understand the market movements even before they’ve happened and adjust your strategies from the get-go. This is the price a competitive-edge model infused with regular competitive analysis can afford you.
A mechanism to stay ahead and mitigate risks that your competitors couldn’t.
Framework for Competitive Analysis: Who’s Vying for the Same Market Share?
It’s vital to delve into each segment that can provide actionable insights while conducting competitive analysis. And help your strategic decisions to elevate effectiveness.
Here’s how.
1. Offerings assessment and differentiation
A comprehensive assessment doesn’t end with the features and benefits. To understand your competitor’s offerings from the inside out and determine their market positioning, grasping the product lifecycle, customer experiences, and after-conversion support is also fundamental.
The data points you’ve gathered should be able to provide insight into:
- Are there any unaddressed customer pain points? Or maybe a need for complementary services that can enhance the offerings?
- How frequently do competitors upgrade their offerings or introduce new ones?
- Do you notice any patterns in their innovation cycles?
Look for the cracks and crevices that can help you differentiate your offerings.
2. Brand positioning and image
Understand your and your competitors’ public perception. Some of the best sources for this are social media sentiments, customer reviews, and feedback surveys. Does their image actually align with the innovation roadmap required today- is it reliable and customer-centric?
Additionally, market share doesn’t offer the whole picture. Tap into brands’ reach across different demographics and geographic locations. This will paint a picture regarding the target markets you might’ve overlooked or a market where you can still develop a foothold.
3. Marketing strategies
Outline which digital and physical channels your industry counterparts are investing in, and what the potential returns on these are. It will help you diversify your marketing efforts across more channels and extend reach.
Learn whether their content marketing, advertising, SEO, or social strategies are really working out, and at what points they are taking a tumble. And further, you can gauge more from the existing data regarding how they’ve moderated and curated their marketing approaches-
- Evaluate how they’ve developed and instilled the core brand values in their messaging.
- Is their messaging cohesive and consistent across all platforms?
- Do the insights and value they provide align with the brand image?
4. Pricing models
Pricing points don’t tell you much about the thinking process behind them. Instead, focus on their pricing models- the bundled services, subscription, or freemium they provide. And how does their chosen strategy affect the perceived value: does it meet the brand promises?
Further, highlight if they leverage any discounts or customer loyalty programs to retain and attract new customers. And to what extent does this work in their favor?
5. Company culture
Assess the competition’s employee satisfaction levels and how their company culture impacts operational efficiency. And also brand growth. A high turnover rate signifies operational problems and a negative culture, while a high satisfaction rate correlates with stronger performance and efficiency.
6. Research
a. Secondary
- A thorough digital footprint analysis can help you examine your competitor’s online presence across platforms and channels, like press releases, websites, and social media activity. What are they doing differently while interacting with their target audience, and what form of content receives the most engagement?
- Customer sentiment tracking to quantify both positive and negative reactions. For this, use customer reviews and testimonials to identify what customers actually value and which tidbits receive the most complaints.
- Analyze industry reports and market studies to gauge the umbrella trends that impact all industry players. Where are the most prominent shifts- customer behavior, regulatory changes, or tech adoption? Determine an industry benchmark to measure your performance against.
b. Primary
Curate very focused surveys to gauge customer sentiments first-hand. You can also conduct targeted interviews to establish what the recurring preferences and perceived lacks or edges that your competitors have.
Talking to customers directly removes any falsity in perception and gives you what you need- an honest review of where you might lack and where your competitor can surpass you.
But it also isn’t merely about decoding what these customers think. You must also find out why they hold a specific perspective, or is it all bias?
7. Strategic intelligence gathering
Data analysis isn’t analyzing numbers. It’s about interpreting and applying them correctly. When the process is implemented strategically, it can reveal where your brand stands in comparison. To do so, undertake:
a. Data aggregation and web scraping
Employ web scraping tools to collect large, significant datasets from your competitor’s websites. And then identify trends and patterns across the collated data that might not be visible at the surface level.
Like a shift in financial spending or related patterns could pinpoint a change in strategy- Is it reflective of an acquisition, rebranding, or a new product launch?
b. SWOT analysis and cross-research findings
Based on your research findings, conduct a SWOT analysis for each of your competitors- strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Doing so will provide a clear insight into the data heaps and categorize them into meaningful and actionable segments.
8. Closing the loop- consistent learning
The insights collected from your competitive analysis should be utilized in mapping long-term strategies and daily decision-making processes. There’s less point in using such a nuanced strategy for short-term gains.
The market keeps on fluctuating, so of course, you must also create a loop of competitive analysis where you’re consistently learning and adapting your strategies. With competitive analysis done right, you aren’t just checking in on your competitors, but informing your end-to-end business strategy, from developing your USP to new market entry.
Ascertain that each loop culminates in actionable plans. And the result is improved agility, performance, and proactiveness. And of course, a competitive edge that positions you as the only choice.
The Key to Growth: Competitive Analysis to Develop Market Perceptiveness.
The business strategy and industrial economics expert, Michael E. Porter, once asserted that the “essence of strategic formulation is coping with the competition.”
And rightfully so. Basically, understanding your competitors means assessing the battlefield before the final battle and optimizing every intricate attack or defense strategy accordingly. It’s about helping marketers abandon a very myopic view of the market and dive into the specifics.
Your GTM strategy’s success depends on varied minute factors- the right timing, pricing, marketing and sales strategies, and distribution channels. And overall, your GTM plan of action must align with customer expectations and the base market realities.
This is what competitive analysis offers: a panoramic view of the industry and how your competitors are faring under current conditions. It helps you shine a light and navigate underlying threats and pivot at the right time.
The bottom line is that you anticipate a bloat beforehand. And position yourself as a sharp and proactive brand, one that stays ahead of the curve and plays the long game.
