An analysis of your competitors is an important step in planning your business. aqute.com/competitive-intelligence helps you to understand what makes your business different from the competition, and how to gain a competitive edge.
Start by identifying companies that offer similar products or services. Direct competitors are those who sell similar products or services. Look for gaps in your data and collect more information to fill them.
Direct competitors
Direct competitors are those businesses that are fighting for market dominance in the same industry as yours. These are the businesses with whom you are in a head to head race, offering products almost identical to yours and aiming for the same audience using similar strategies, prices and marketing efforts. You can find out who your direct competitors are by doing a simple Google search of your product or service. Those brands that appear in the top results are your competitors.
Indirect competitors are those who offer solutions that satisfy the same basic customer needs but do not directly mirror your product or service. They operate in adjacent markets and can be either local or global. The cinema next door to your movie theater, for example, is an indirect competitor of your business because they both offer entertainment options that cater to the same crowd.
Performing routine competitor analysis is essential to your success because the market can change at any time, and if you’re not constantly scanning it, you may miss those shifts. You want to know who your competitors are and what their strengths and weaknesses are so you can create stronger products, more effective sales tactics, and more enticing marketing campaigns.
There are many ways to perform competitor analyses, but the best is to use an online tool that gives you actionable insights while allowing you to monitor your competitors’ moves in real time. This type of tool can offer everything from competitor analyses to social media monitoring and content benchmarking. It can also track digital performance.
Performing a competitor analysis
To start, you’ll want to identify your direct and indirect competitors. Create a list of all companies in your field that offer the same product or services as you. Then, analyze each of their strengths and weaknesses. Once you’ve identified these, prioritize your competitive analysis by examining the competition on every level: from their products and sales tactics to their marketing and content strategies, all online and offline.
