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Competitive research is a process that is vital for business growth and success. It involves identifying a business’s major competitors, followed by the analysis of their products, sales, and marketing strategies. By doing this, you will identify your competitors’ strengths, weaknesses, and the threat they pose to your business.
What’s more, conducting a comprehensive research about your competitors helps you analyze their activities better, including product and sales strategy. With this information, you will be able to develop strategies that will give you a competitive advantage over your rivals. To conduct effective competitive research, here are some top tips:
Identify Your Competitors
The first step you should take when conducting a competitive analysis is to identify your competitors. How you do this will depend on your industry and your market. Some interesting places to look are Amazon and Google. You can start by searching for products similar to yours as well as your business idea.
When you find your competitors, divide them into two categories: direct and indirect. Place competitors whose products or services are similar to yours and can serve as a substitute in the direct competitor category. Then, place competitors whose products are not the same as yours but can satisfy the same need in the indirect competitor list. Focus only on those brands that fall in the direct competitor list.
Analyze Their Products and Sales Strategy
After you have identified your competitors, analyze their products. Conduct in-depth research into the products or services they offer, along with their quality, and pricing. Also, examine their market share, their distribution methods, and what makes them different.
Once you are done with this, examine their sales strategy. Identify the sales channels they use, what advantage their approach has over yours, their annual revenue and sales volume, and more.
Analyze Their Marketing
When conducting competitive research, it is also necessary to examine your competitors’ marketing techniques. You can take a look at their website to determine this, along with their content strategy, their engagement on social media, and their online presence.
The information you glean from this can be used to improve your marketing efforts. For example, if you notice that a particular piece of content is performing extraordinarily, you can incorporate it into your strategy.
Conduct a SWOT Analysis
Conduct a SWOT analysis of your competitors by analyzing their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Doing this will help you understand the areas where you should focus and give your business the advantage it deserves.
Identify Areas for Improvement
Finally, compare your business to your competitors to determine how you can improve or stand out. For example, evaluate the threats their weaknesses pose to them, then leverage this and ensure you excel in that area. At the same time, do your best to ensure you are, at the very least, on par with their strengths.
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By conducting an in-depth competitive research, you will be able to identify areas where you can improve your business. As a result, you will have an edge over your rivals and corner a large share of the market for yourself.