Chapter 3: Competitor Research
What is a competitive analysis?
A competitive analysis can help you learn the ins and outs of how your competition works and identify potential opportunities where you can outperform them. It drives business strategy, helps you defend your brand, and uncover new areas of the market to dominate.
Why is part of brand identity?
It’s really not, it’s part of a market strategy, however, if you aren’t doing a strategy and ONLY doing a brand identity project, you’re doing yourself or client a disservice by not including it. That being said, make sure you’re charging for this type of work because it’s a lot.
What do we need to complete during a competitive analysis?
Features/Products/Services
Pricing
Target Audience
Marketing
Differentiators
Ethos driving their brand
Strengths
Weaknesses
How do we identify our competitors?
Types of competitors:
Direct: offer the same product/service/feature, constantly going toe-to-toe for the top spot.
Example: Siri vs Alexa
Indirect: offer a similar experience, in a similar industry. They solve the same general pain point, but in different ways
Example: Nike and Steve Madden
Replacement Competitors: offer the same product/service/feature and target the same audience your brand does
Ecommerce shops and retail shops selling the same things to the same people
Note anyone who pops up in your Google Search.
Look at Google Trends, SimilarWeb - note anyone who comes up.
Search it in Reddit and Quora - note anyone who is mentioned in an answer.
Look it up on social media accounts - who pops up?
Who is dominating industry conferences?
Start with manual Google Searches
of what you want to sell
Now you have a long list of competitors.
For each competitor you have, review who follows them on social media to get a general look at their audience. Check out review sites (Google Business, Yelp, Etsy reviews, Amazon reviews, etc.). Pay attention to the kind of people who are leaving reviews and the sentiment.