How to Conduct an Efficient Competitor Analysis and What Techniques to Use

To ensure your product or services stand out, your organization has a lot to do: identify market trends, define must-have features, constantly search for improvements, analyze competitors, and strengthen the marketing strategy.

In this post, we overview competitor research, its benefits, and how to conduct a competitor analysis. Read the full article to learn all the details and nuances.

What is a competitor analysis in general?

A competitor analysis is the process of identifying your competitors and evaluating their strategies, sales, marketing tactics, products, and services. The goal is to determine strengths and weaknesses of existing solutions and identify potential opportunities where you can outperform them.

Here are a few examples of advantages a competitor analysis can bring:

• Understanding industry standards and trends and finding ways to meet them
• Discovering untapped market niches and new ways to fulfill customer needs
• Implementing strong business strategies and differentiating your brand
• Differentiating your products or services and capturing market share
• Enhancing your marketing strategies and measuring your growth

Why conduct a competitor analysis

Based on our experience, Apriorit’s business analysts (BAs) outline four key reasons to perform a competitor analysis.

1. Learn industry trends. The purpose is to gain a clear understanding of what your customers need and expect instead of simply copying what your competitors do.

2. Identify both your and your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. A proven way to do so is by analyzing customer feedback on competitors’ products.

3. Target the most effective marketing strategies. Observe your competitors’ marketing practices and see which are efficient and which you can adopt and customize for your product.

4. Locate gaps in your competitors’ offerings. Observe which customer needs are left unmet by your competitors’ services or products and figure out ways you can cover them.

The main stages of competitor analysis

A competitive analysis can be helpful at every stage of your product life cycle, no matter whether you start with an MVP or go for a full-scale project right off the bat. Here’s a four-step approach that we suggest for an efficient competitive analysis:

Step 1: Identify your competitors and select companies to research

Consider starting with answering these three questions:

How can you determine who your competitors are?

Before you start looking for other players on the market, it’s essential to clearly identify search criteria and know types of competitors. Start with answering the following questions:

• Who is your target audience?
• What is the main issue your target audience wants to address?
• How does your product solve this issue?

Where should you look for competitors?

Here’s a list of effective approaches we use at Apriorit to find products and services similar to the projects we work on:

• Search for rankings of top players
• Check out software marketplaces and product review platforms
• Read online reviews
• Use website traffic, SEO, and SEM solutions

How many competitors should you analyze?

The best approach is to conduct thorough competitor research on three to five companies rather than superficially exploring a dozen companies. Also, if there are only a few players in your market, consider including one or two direct competitors (if they exist) and focus on indirect competitors.

Step 2: Study your competitors

Once you’ve gathered all the information about competitors’ products we mentioned above, it’s time to structure it and start analyzing it. Competitive analysis techniques can be divided into four high-level categories:

Step 3: Conduct SWOT analysis

At Apriorit, we use a SWOT matrix after the main research stage in which we analyze the company, the product, the company’s marketing, and users’ awareness. A SWOT matrix helps us and our clients see the whole picture of a competitor. In addition, the SWOT technique is ideal for summing up your product’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

Find out an example of what the filled-out SWOT matrix looked like in the full article on our blog.

Step 4: Put the information together and summarize the results

The most convenient way to have all your information in one place is by creating a comparison table with all features of products on the market. Use tables to compare features of different products and mark features that your solution has. This visualizes functionality represented by each company, showing you which features are popular or widespread and which are unique or rare. Here are a few tips:

• Explore resources and files competitors offer their users to discover all features or to check whether a product has a certain feature.
• If some features are sold as additional products, highlight them with another color to distinguish such crucial information.
• For each company, make a list of the features your product and your competitor’s product share, features that are partly overlapping among your application and your competitor’s products, and features only your competitors have.

Final thoughts

Researching your competitors is a great way to better understand the market and your own product, learn about the issues your users have along with ways to solve them, and find ideas for new features.

However, to make sure you don’t miss anything important during a competitor analysis, it’s critical to work with a professional business analyst. At Apriorit, we have a team of experienced business analysts ready to help you analyze the market, discover relevant approaches and techniques, and ensure a top-quality product. With our expertise in different fields and regions, Apriorit’s BAs can come up with a strong and efficient research strategy that serves your business objectives.