If you are not aware of what your competitors are up to, then you are missing out on money-making opportunities. Hence, to make your company a success, you must conduct a competitive analysis. It equips you with the ability to adapt instantly to the changes in the competitive landscape and even profit from industry trends that your competitors are unaware of.
Are you ready to create one but don’t know where to start? No worries, we’ll guide you the way. But first, let’s see what a competitive analysis report actually is then we’ll proceed further.
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What is a competitive analysis report?
A competitive analysis study compares your company’s strengths and weaknesses against those of your competitors. A competitive analysis report will often include the following information:
- a description of the target market for your company
- Details about your product’s attributes in comparison to those of your competitors’ products
- A breakdown of sales, market share, and revenues, both present and future.
- Pricing model comparisons
- An examination of social media and marketing strategies
- A summary of consumer feedback on each competitor’s features
However, know that the details to be included in the competitive analysis report will vary from company to company based on your business’s growth and your objectives.
Steps to writing a competitive analysis report:
Having a well-researched competitive analysis report would give you the efficient tools to make solid strategic decisions through your business work process, whether it is a startup seeking to build a brand’s image or an established corporation looking to cement its position against the competitors. Hence, to make a solid report, you must consider the following components:
Begin by glancing at a list of competitors:
A solid analysis report would demonstrate what your company should compete against to keep in the long run. Hence, for that you should audit any service or product that is already in the market which claims to solve a similar issue like your company is attempting to answer for clients. It would be great if you create a brief competitor profile for each one, having the following information:
- market share and revenue of the company
- Organization’s size and details regarding the executive team
- Briefly explained the company’s strengths and disadvantages.
- An overview of how customers see the company
Having all this on board will help you provide your readers with a broad understanding of the market. However, you can look up Harvey Balls to present your findings effectively. See the template below for reference:
2. Discover customer identities and industry trends:
Remember, you can not write a competitive analysis report without conducting significant market research. You need to gather data to understand your potential customers better, find growth prospects, and spot industry trends.
This study can assist you in developing client profiles that will influence future marketing and other business-related decisions, as well as allow you to anticipate market shifts. For example, to do primary market research, you can look up customer interviews, surveys conducted online, and buy a competitor’s product to research delivery and packaging. Whereas to conduct secondary market research, you can examine company files and investigate recent technical advancements.
3. Compare the product’s features with competitor’s product:
The feature comparison is the most crucial aspect of competitive study. Camping By both the product’s features, you’ll be able to see what truly distinguishes them from the rest and what you lack. Below we have jotted down some attributes that must be included along with the basics features in the feature comparison matrix:
- Price of the product
- Service
- Quality of the product
- Number of features
- User interface
- Warranties
- Customer support
However, remember if you conduct market research to know about the products, you must always speak with the individuals who have actually used the products, yours and those of your competitors. Doing so will help you know better about your target clients’ feelings about the competition.
4. Summarize your assets and liabilities:
It’ll be chaotic when you are undertaking research for your competitive analysis. You will have a lot of complex data that someone who is not familiar with all this won’t be able to comprehend. That is why a SWOT analysis is so important.
A SWOT analysis is a method for assessing your competitive position by identifying your weaknesses, major strengths, threats and opportunities. This might serve as a quick overview of your competitive research study, especially for those who do not have time to go into the intricacies.
Following are some questions that you may consider for your SWOT analysis:
- Strengths: What are you good at? In which work area do you do well ( for instance, in marketing, sales, technology, and so on)?
- Weaknesses: What are the issues you are having trouble with? What is it that is preventing us from moving forward?
- Opportunities: What is our largest competitor’s weakest point? Market gaps that are not being filled right now?
- Threats: What does our largest rival do that we don’t? What issues aren’t being addressed right now?
To present your SWOT analysis effectively, you can look up to SlideModel for presentation templates like the below:
5. Display how you fit in the competitive market:
Now that you have done all the analyzes, it’s time to identify where each major competitor is in the present competitive landscape. For that, the most common method is to determine the two most critical dimensions because of which you are competitive in the industry and plot them on a matrix. Alternatively, it may be sufficient to just outline in words the characteristics and benefits which make you stand out from your competition.
