5 Steps to Competitive Analysis

It sites doesn’t matter if you’re a reputable brand or a new start-up knowing who you’re competing with is vital to your growth strategy. To do this, you’ll need an analysis of your competitors – an assessment of your rival’s strengths and weaknesses. This will guide your offensive and defensive strategy.

You can hire a third-party market intelligence firm to assist you with this work however, you can do a thorough and accurate analysis of your competitors on your own. BDC Senior Business Advisor Mallika Kazim outlines the five steps of a framework for competitor analysis to help you understand your competitors strengths and weaknesses and gain the insights that guide your growth strategies.

Analyzing your competitors is a crucial step in making your product roadmap along with your marketing plan and sales strategy, in addition to setting benchmarks to measure your success. It’s the most effective method to focus on specific details of the market landscape to see how your products and services compare against the competitors. In addition to the principal products your competitors offer A thorough analysis of your competitors will include their pricing strategy and positioning. It should also provide an in-depth study of their communication strategies and what differentiates them from other brands.

To conduct a competitor analysis, start with identifying competitors who are closest to you on the market. The next step is to conduct a thorough research using a mix of secondary and primary sources, which include data collected by your team or user tools for research like Ahrefs or SEMrush. After you’ve gathered your data make use of a competitor grid (or matrix) to arrange it. This will make the results easier to digest. This will help you identify larger trends that could affect your strategy.