Competitor Analysis

When developing, optimising, and growing your digital products and channels, it is critical to differentiate from and outperform your competitors.

Understanding what your competitors are doing well - and not so well - is essential research to inform the direction of your digital product.

At The Product Agency, we have a distinct methodology for undertaking competitor analysis by understanding all aspects of your competitors to help prioritise, out-compete and differentiate.

Paired with user research and experimentation, competitor analysis is an excellent way to learn, benchmark and align stakeholders and the product roadmap.

The background to competitor analysis

Competitor analysis has existed as a form of research for many years, often as part of a broader business plan and strategy.

There are many ways to conduct competitor research, often dictated by time, budget and needs: ‘product’ is, after all, about agility, lateral thinking and finding the shoe that fits.

The process does not necessarily have to be laborious and highly structured - especially if you have already undertaken competitor analysis – though we believe, at a minimum, good competitor analysis should offer the following key benefits:

Alignment

Aligning stakeholders, internal teams, and your agency is crucial for excellent and harmonious product development. Competitor analysis is an important part of this alignment.

Understanding your competitors and the market you are playing in ensures that decisions are not only consistent and aligned but also that you can reference why such decisions were made.

This is especially true for agencies that understand your market and competitors less. They need the analysis to ensure they can make decisions that align with yours.

Informed decision making

Competitor analysis can mix qualitative and quantitative data: opinions, observations and experience vs statistical and empirical data.

In product management, moving from gut feeling to evidence-based thinking is a critical step in making informed decisions.

Competitor analysis is essential in helping informed decision-making.

Enhanced product strategy

Better and more nuanced decisions can be made with data and insights.

Which, in turn, can enhance the competitive advantage of your digital product through an improved product strategy. New opportunities can be identified.

This is an ongoing process as you gather insights and data from your digital product and channels and learn more about your competitors and the changes in the market.

Risk mitigation

The use of data and insights reduces risk.

A crucial part of product management is building confidence by identifying and proactively mitigating risk: understanding your competitors and marketplace informs this.

The Product Agency approach to Competitor Analysis

No two clients or digital products are the same.

Therefore, while we use proven techniques, tools, and methodologies in our competitor analysis, the combination will vary from assignment to assignment.

Having touched on the benefits we seek to achieve from undertaking competitor analysis, below are the areas we will typically cover:

Your business

• Understanding your business values, goals, services and benefits.
• Understanding your competitive advantages.
• Understanding your value propositions and the value exchange you offer customers.

Target audiences

• Understanding the audiences you want to reach with your product or service.
• Understanding any niche target markets.
• Understanding your position relative to these target markets.

Market penetration and market reports

• Understanding the success of your product in your market.
• Understanding how the market is distributed.
• Understanding the awareness of your target markets.
• Determining what further primary or secondary market research is needed.

Competitor identification

• Identifying and understanding your competitors.
• Identifying who else could inform your product and product strategy.

Competitor Analysis - SWOT

• Mapping the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of your competitors.

Competitor Analysis – Product

• Mapping the features and functions of your competitor products.
• Understanding the UX and CX of your competitor products.
• Understanding the performance of your competitor products.

Competitor Analysis – Content, marketing channels and customer engagement

• Understanding the content – quality and depth – of your competitor products.
• Understanding the (marketing) channels used by your competitor products and their strength in these channels (e.g. SEO, social, email, video, networks, affiliations.)
• Understanding the customer engagement of your competitor products.

Competitor Analysis – Pricing

• Understanding the pricing of your competitors.

Evolving your competitor analysis over time

Understanding your market and competitors as they evolve should be crucial to your product business plan and strategy.

This is where we can help.

An evolving and strengthening product business plan is critical to the broader product roadmap and strategy and extracting the most value from your product and channels.

Over time, the cadence of this evolution and growth in market and competitor appreciation should increase, and part of our service is to guide this.

Short-term, actionable recommendations

Having outlined the benefits of competitor analysis and especially from an evolving understanding of your competitors and market, we are often approached by clients who need shorter-term, actionable recommendations.

Ideally, digital product development should not be reactionary and having a good understanding of your market should lessen the need to be reactionary.

However, a significant market change, such as a new entrant to the market or regulatory change, can sometimes mean being reactionary and short-term, which is fine.

We can help rapidly develop product and product strategy recommendations supported by competitor and market analysis.

Cross-disciplinary expertise

At The Product Agency, we are focused on the full product lifecycle: research, product development, product growth and product optimisation through data and insight.

Executing and delivering the product is just one part of the product lifecycle. Realising the product closes the lifecycle.

We, therefore, use expertise and specialisation at each point of the lifecycle and borrow this expertise when undertaking competitor analysis.

This delivers a more specialised outcome with insights and analysis from specific experience.

Do you want to discuss your competitor and market analysis objectives?

Even as a standalone piece of research, competitor and market research can be hugely powerful, providing both insight and direction.

A cursory cut can be revealing.

If you are looking for insight and external validation, we would love to discuss how competitor and market analysis might help your digital product.

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