How to Conduct a Competitive Analysis

A competitive analysis provides insights into competitors that can help you in all areas of your business from product development to marketing strategies to sales techniques. You can learn from the failures and successes of your competitors and concentrate on your strengths. A bird’s eye perspective of the industry could reveal trends that you may not have considered. For example, Blockbuster didn’t move with the changes in the video rental space and was ultimately replaced by other players such as Netflix.

To conduct a competitive analysis, you must have the right tools. A competitive analysis can help identify the most effective strategies to expand your business and ensure sustainable revenue growth. It is important to regularly conduct competitor analysis to learn what other businesses are doing in order to compete for your audience.

You can use a variety of approaches to conduct an analysis of competition. Popular options include a Porter’s Five Forces analysis (an assessment market forces that affect your industry) and the Boston Consulting Group Model (Star Questions Mark Cash Cow, Pet based on growth and market share). Whatever method you choose the best method, it’s important to keep in mind that a competitive analysis should be performed on a regular basis to learn from your competitors and adapt your strategy in line with. A tool that can help you analyze your competition, such as Competitive Monitoring can aid you in doing sites just that by crawling your competition’s website and social media pages as well as identifying their strategy for marketing and uncovering pain points that you can solve with your own products.