ABOUT COMPETITION ANALYSIS CONSULTANCY

Competition analysis is a broad term that refers to the practice of researching, analyzing, and comparing competitors in relation to yourself. Organizations execute competition analysis for various reasons such as to execute SEO, branding, go-to-market strategy, pricing, conversion optimization and much more. If you decide to invest in competition analysis, you will surely reap the benefits of clarity and confidence. It is important to understand and answer certain important questions such as: 

• How does you company stand out? What makes it absolutely unique?
• How do your competitors position you as compared to your competitors?
• How is the user experience on your website as compared to your competitors?

It is important to gauge through usability insights, design advantages, ideas for testing, value propositions, and much more. There are various steps involved to run a great competitor analysis, and these are discussed below in detail: 

• SET YOUR GOALS

Before initiating with competitive analysis, it is important to remember the first essential truth of competitive intelligence. It states that how one thinks about the mission greatly impacts as to how one executes the mission. It is important to have clear goals at this stage. It is important to get answers to certain specific questions such as: (a) Which decisions will your competitive research impact? (b) Are you looking forward to refine strategies? (c) Are you experimenting with the funnel structure, and many more. Thus, if your goals are well-defined, it will help you structure the research to meet your goals. This is how competition analysis consultancy starts at its very first step. 

• IDENTIFY YOUR COMPETITION

It is important to identify the competitive players in your industry segment. For the same, you may run a Google search, check Google trends, check the list of presenters and companies running booths at your industry’s conferences, ask your customers who else they consider, and much more. 

• CONDUCT A COMPETITIVE USABILITY INVESTIGATION

Do you really know as to how your site measures up as compared to others? This is where comparative user testing comes to rescue. This is when you ask participants to evaluate your website as well as the websites of top two competitors. Ou may also start by asking the participants to enter queries into Google. Ask them to use the words that they would naturally use when looking for a product or a service that you offer. What do they click?  Which results show up? Also conduct a 5 second first impression test – wherein you ask participants to look at the first website and describe the site in three words. Ask them what the site is about and what services are being offered? Ask them how the website makes them feel. The results can be compared with other two competitor websites. Then, ask them –  Which website gives the best user experience and why? This is how the third step of competitive analysis consultancy is executed. 

• COMPARE COMPETITOR VALUE PROPOSITIONS

After skimming through your website, visitors may remember you for three main reasons to buy a product or a service from you. Most likely, they may only remember one and that constitutes your main selling point at the website. To have to really know hoe competitors position themselves. This will help you create a value proposition that really differentiates you. To pin point your value propositions, Chris Goward discussed three important aspects, as below: 

• POINTS OF PARITY (POPs): These refer to features you offer that are important to your prospects and shared amongst you and your competitors. 

• POINTS OF DIFFERENCE (PODs): These refer to features that are important to your prospects and not available from competitors. 

• POINTS OF IRRELEVANCE: These refer to features that customers do not care much about. 

• INTERVIEW YOUR COMPETITOR’S CUSTOMERS

The competitor’s customers will exactly tell you how satisfied they are with a competing product or service. They can tell you why they selected the competitor over you. For executing this step, it is important for you to use your network. You may also use snowballing technique wherein you ask each research participant to introduce you to subsequent interviews, Many questions can be put forth, such as – (a) What made you look for a possible solution in a product or a service? (b) Describe your top five buying criteria in order of importance, (c) What were the main reasons for which you chose a particular company over others?, and many more. This is how the fifth step of competition analysis consultancy is executed. 

• RUN A COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS FOR DESIGN

It is important to ask the customer for three competitor website as well as their strengths and weaknesses are considered with respect to a product / service. This is then followed up by performing individual search to have organic results. Sometimes, all that is needed is a better visual design than a competitor. At times, the competitor is better in explaining the value propositions for the product / service for more logical and structured flow of elements. 

• MAKE A QUANTITATIVE COMPETITIVE INVESTIGATION

Much data about the competitors can be pulled through via SimilarWeb, including your traffic volume, key traffic sources, organic and paid keywords, and much more. With SEMrush, it becomes possible to find the best performing keywords of your competitor. You can also get deeper insights into the strategies of your competitors with respect to display advertising, link building, organic and paid search, and much more. 

• RUN A FUNCTIONAL INVESTIGATION

At the step, it is important to study your competitor’s technology stacks to shed light on their level of maturity as an organization. You may get ideas as to what tools you could use for yourself. Certain tools allow you to peek through your competitor’s websites and exactly understand what software they use. These elements constitute the last step of competitive analysis consultancy which is termed as running a functional investigation.