Dr. Mohd Aslam Alig
Competitive research refers to the identification of competitors in the market. It aims to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses and the strengths and weaknesses of the products and services they offer.
As businesses strive to enhance their market share and win over customers, there must be a well-articulated strategy to go about it, and conducting competitive research is a significant part of it. No business can ever succeed without conducting a thorough analysis of what its competitors offer, the opportunities available to them, their weaknesses, strengths, and the strategies to attract and retain customers.
A proper analysis of competition and substitute products and services offered by different market players will help you get a better understanding of your imperfections and what you must do to improve your market image and attract customers to your brand. In short, an analysis of competition will help you learn from your competitors’ achievements and failures.
Between, analyzing the competition will also allow you to enhance your unique selling points and reach underserved customers.
Steps to Conduct Competitive Research
There are two types of opponents that are direct and indirect. Therefore, at the outset, identify who are the top contenders in the market.
Direct competitors are the ones who target the same audience as you aim to target, who try to solve the same problem that you aim to solve, and the ones who offer the same product or service that you want to offer.
Whereas,
Indirect competitors may sell products or services similar to yours but will target a different customer base or may have a similar target audience but will offer different products or services.
Below we have shared six steps to conducting competitive research:
Identify chief competitors and gather information
Whether direct or indirect, while identifying competitors of your brand, you will have to start with your product/service. A comprehensive understanding of your product/service and the value it supplies to the audience is essential for the identification of your challengers.
You can find out the chief competitors in your industry via an online search. All you have to do is simply search for the product or service on any search engine and check what comes up. Between, do look into the conversations your competitors engage in with their customers (this social media world has every information available online)
After identification of the top contenders in the market, gather information about them. The best way to do it would be to act like one of their customers. Subscribe to their emails, check how customer-centric they are, and find articles you find worth purchasing.
Check their online presence and see people who interact with their website and if they sell similar products as yours, find out customers who are interested in purchasing those products as this could be a great opportunity to find out potential customers.
Analyze the online presence of your opponents
Identifying chief competitors would not do any good to your business. Therefore, once you are done identifying top contenders in the market, check their online presence, blogs, social media content, white papers, notifications they issue, and other similar information.
Ask yourself questions like:
● Is their website easy to navigate?
● How much would you rate it as a user?
● Are the products and services offered easily understandable?
● If you find the website attractive and captivating?
● Is it mobile optimized?
● How often do they post, and is their content good?
● What are the main topics they post around?
● Which social media platforms do they mostly use?
● As an audience, do you find their content engaging and captivating?
● Is there anything you find missing on your website?
● And what you can learn from them.
On the path to finding answers to these questions, you will come across a lot of opportunities to outshine your competitors; just make sure you pay detailed attention to everything they are doing.
The main aim of this analysis is to help you understand where you need to utilize your time and energy.
Track your findings
Tracking findings is one of the most crucial steps in conducting competitive research. It aims to help entrepreneurs with ongoing monitoring.
Start by restating the purpose of your examination so that you re-focus on the primary areas. Also, do not forget to add figures, graphs, and quality tables, as they help synthesize research.
Tracking findings is not a tricky process, all you have to do is, keep a check on what your opponents are doing, how they change their pricing techniques, and the methods they use to promote their products and services.
One way to do it can be:
Preparing a differentiation table showing your direct competitors on one side and indirect on the other, then track the ensuing information:
● Name of the company
● Website
● Social media platforms they are active on
● Their opportunities and threats
● Their unique features, and
● Other additional links
Determine areas of improvement
Now that you are equipped with all the nuts and bolts and are aware of the biggest differences between you and your competitors, it is time to take action and improve your business results.
Use all the information gathered to identify areas where you can improve and utilize all the time and money used to gather this information in finding opportunities available for you, potential threats for your business, attracting and keeping customers, and above all improving your brand identity.
Ask yourself questions like:
● Where do you lack?
● Where does your business need advancements?
● Have you been targeting the right audience?
● How can you grab opportunities better than your opponents?
● What are the ways to get a first-mover advantage?
● What does the market need?
● What are ways to lower the effect of external factors affecting your business?
Summing Up
Competitive research may seem challenging, but the identification of contenders is as important as the identification of customers.
Organizations that succeed in this competitive world are the ones who keep a close check on their rivals’ activities and continuously innovate. Customers would obviously be loyal to the brands that keep coming up with better deals for their customers and figure out smooth solutions for tricky problems.
Without proper awareness of competitors’ business, you may end up totally blindsided when they plan to set up a new product line in direct competition with one of yours, make advancements in their existing products, or are about to take the first-mover advantage.
Knowing where your rivals stand will help you make better judgments.
