How to perform competitor research
This blog is part of the Brand Foundation Series. Where the first five posts talked about your vision and mission, how you can define your why, your values & beliefs, how you can make your business stand out, and how you determine your ideal client. Last week we talked about how you can use market research to get to know your ideal clients, and this week we all continue with the research phase, but instead of looking at your clients, we will be looking at your competitors. Because to stand out, you need to know where the gap in the market is.
You will learn:
Why do you need a competitor analysis
What is a competitor analysis
What is included in a competitor analysis
Once you have done audience research, it will be easier to define who your competitors are. You can think of competitors as others that are in the same niche or offering the same services.
But do not forget to think out of the box when thinking who your competitors might be. You might be a brand designer and only compare yourself with other brand designers. But you will likely lose business to logo designers who only charge a fraction of what you do. Or a family member that is good with canva. It might not be the same service, but there is an overlap in the target audience.
It could also be others who are aiming for the same positioning or who have a similar messaging. When I was researching other business coaches and strategists that more or less offer the same services such as 1:1 coaching, courses and memberships, I noticed how differently these services and courses were sold. The angle to sell these services was completely different.
The main messages I came across were:
You have a message to share / you want to make an impact in the world
Create a brand that stands out and books out
Get clear. Get Confident. Get clients
It is time to come home to who you really are
Teaching female entrepreneurs who struggle with building a revenue-generating business, how to brand and market their mission & message online to make more money and impact
And this is what I mean by thinking outside of the box. As you might compare just on services but if you are brand 2 or 3, your message will attract a different audience then brand 1 and 4. While if your message is similar to brand 4, but your services are not directly comparable, you could still compete with brand 4. Because it is not about who we see as a competitor but who our audience sees as our competitors, and this might be completely different.
Why do you need a competitor analysis?
We all have competitors that we can lose business too. So you need to know who you are competing within the market and know what else is out there being offered to your audience so that you can make an educated decision about how you can stand out.
There is a big chance you already have done the work when you spend the time to work on your vision, mission, values and believes and defined what you are good at and what your knowledge and experience is. As combining this, will automatically help you stand out. But when you can find out where there is a gap in the market that you can fill, your positioning will be even stronger.
Because that is what it is all about; your brand positioning. This is where you are in the heads of your audience vs your competitors.
And the better you steer your audience in the right direction with your messaging, visuals and marketing, the bigger the chance you get that desired positioning.
What is a competitor analysis?
It is not enough to follow your competitors on social media, which we probably all do. You need to go much deeper than this and use data. You need to take a step back from their pretty social feed (and stop comparing yours with it) and dive much deeper.
What services do they offer? What are their price points, what messages do they often use to connect with their audience (this goes back to that angle that I talked about earlier), which pain points are they focusing on, how strong are the client testimonials, what is their social presence?
And I can name a few more, but I will go more in-depth in the next step. But I hope this short overview shows you that a competitor analysis if done right, can give you so many insights in the market that you can use to your advantage and make your position even stronger - the strategic way. And not by chance.
Just a quick example to illustrate this; if you have been a designer for a couple of years, there is a big chance you do not have a specific market like copywriters or coaches that your target but you have developed a certain design style. But as this is a huge market, the chance other designers are targeting this market and have a similar style (remember here that it is not about who you define as a competitor within this style, but your audience) is quite big.
From your competitor research, you have found that they all have a strong social media following, the grids with a lot of designs all look quite similar, and the type of brand messaging (the angle) they are using is more or less the same. They all focus on selling brands that attract the right clients. Now you know, that if you use a different angle to sell your design services, your message will stand out from theirs. You can pick another benefit of strong brand design, or you can use your mission as your overarching message.
What is included in a competitor analysis?
So, what exactly do you need to do when doing this competitor analysis? Well, this kind of depends on your business. Its size and the size of your competitors as well as how much information is available.
There are off course tools that you can use that can give you more insights like the competitor analysis tool of Semrush, but a lot of these tools are just too expensive for how often we would use them. So I am going to assume here that it will be a DIY competitor research and you will use free accessible tools to perform the research.
Firstly define which competitors you are going to look into. This can be competitors that are more aspirational because they have the business model you would like to have or because they have been in business longer and have to build a strong position in this period.
But this can also be competitors that you are directly competing with, and this might be a guess. But if you send a proposal to a prospective client and it gets declined, it could not hurt to ask them who they choose to work with and why. Not everyone will answer this question, but if you put it in such a way that you are just using this as feedback that you can learn from, you might get some valuable input.
Before diving into the more elaborate research, ask yourself these questions for each competitor:
What do you like about this company?
What do you not like about what this company is doing?
If you can take one thing away from what this company is doing, what is it?
This will already give you some insights, and you know which areas to focus on. But let us get into more detail of what to focus on.
Background
The information you will be able to gather about this part is probably limited. With larger businesses, this will go into the location, if there are more then one office, the business structure, ownership etc. While for most of us, we compete with other self-employed businesses.
Business structure: Are they self-employed businesses? Do they have a VA or assistant? If there are more people involved; is there more then one owner or is there hired staff.
Business model: Are they diversifying their income with courses, memberships, passive income, group programmes? (in services, you can go more in-depth)
History of business: how long have they been in business?
Services
This is an in-depth examination of the services they are offering
What services, courses, programmes are they offering?
How many different services are they offering?
What is included, in these services?
What are the price points and do the price points make sense vs the differences in the services?
How do they describe the services? Is it based on features or benefits? Are they selling the transformation?
Branding
Here I am combining brand strategy elements like positioning and brand identity like logos and website.
What is their business name? Does it make sense? It is clear what they offer?
What does identity design look like; Is there only a logo or full identity design? Is the identity (fonts, colours, etc.) used consistently?
Does the website have the same feel as their social presence?
What is their key messaging? Which angle are they using? What are the pain points they come back too?
Is how they want to position themselves in line with their visual identity? Do they offer premium packages, but have a 'cheap' looking identity?
Can you see the person behind the brand? Are they visible on social in photos or videos?
Does the brand have a personality?
Marketing
This is more about how are they getting their message out in the world
Online presence; what does their social following look like? Where are they present
Do they have engagement on their channels? Does the number of likes and comments make sense with the size of their following?
Do the social profiles use the same image and message?
Pricing and discounts; do you see them offering a lot of discount? Are they regularly having a sale?
Do they offer; free resources like lead magnets?
What other value do they offer? Do they have blog posts or a newsletter?
Review the testimonials. What are their clients saying? Is there something that keeps coming back about their services or results? Can you read between the lines and determine what they could do better?
Personnel
This will depend on the size of the business. You might only compete with other self-employed, but it is good to know if they have a VA or assistant that helps them. As this could give insights into how many projects they can take on.
Now, look at the overview of your competitors. Is there a gap in the market? This could be in the messaging, the positioning, the design or writing style or in variations that are not done. Can you niche down further and become the expert in this niche?
Up next
Next up in this Brand Foundation series is about deciding which services to offer now you know who you want to work with, what your ideal client needs and which gaps there are in the market.
How do you feel about your knowledge about your competitors? Do you feel like you are not standing out?
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