Components needed for “Competitive Analysis.”
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Competitive analysis is in simple terms is identifying other similar products in the market.
As part of PM, you need to look at the competing products in the market. Once you identified all the competing product you want to understand each product’s strategy, you can usually get a glimpse of this by using the product or looking at the marketing material. From there, you can identify the strengths and weaknesses of each product. Having this insight allows you to better predict shifts in market behaviour and trends. Once done, you will understand exactly where your product fits in, which in turn can help to inform your product strategy or how you can create advantages for your product.
What does competitive analysis include?
Well! Competitive analysis can look at a lot of different factors in including things like funding, support and global presence just to name of few.
- Product offering & key features: What types of product does the competitor have and what are the key features that make this product attractive to the customers and stand out.
- Differentiators: What makes competitor different from other’s that are in the space?
- Target customers: Identifying who competitors are targeting, who is that product intended for?
- Distribution Channel: How does a product get to the customer?
- Price Point: How exactly does the product price and how is it compare to our pricing strategy?
How do you build a competitive analysis?
There are lots of different ways that you can provide insight into the competing product.
- Google: The first place I usually start is at Google to get a better understanding of just what product exists and out there.
- Review the website and marketing materials: When I spend some time searching, I review website and marketing contents to get the better sense if the product is a competitor or not.
- Use the product: If it’s a competitor, I generally want to use the product to understand what it is and how it works.
- Read reviews: Afterwards, I read reviews to find out how well it’s doing by reading reviews.
- Check out social media presence (Twitter, Reddit, etc.): This is eye-opening to check out there social media presence.
Types of Competitors:
We just walked through different types of competitors and a couple of examples of each one. When you are building your product strategy, understanding the competitions is super IMPORTANT, so this is something you always want to keep in mind! Thanks for reading.
