A Beginner’s Guide to Competitor Analysis in 2024

Nowadays, every business genre is characterized by overcrowding and intense competition. Thus, individual enterprises must go the extra mile to gain a stable footing in their niche. It is irrespective of their style and type. Various techniques help companies stand out from the crowd. It is for devising a stellar brand strategy that always works. A well-rounded brand strategy relies on market orientation. It is for identifying and meeting the target clientele’s overarching. It is for inconspicuous needs and desires.

There is also a critical yet highly overlooked aspect of brand strategy. It is for choosing how your business wants to compete. This organically entails understanding the competition and your overall market share. For many organizations, competition analysis is different. It ends with quickly perusing their rivals’ websites and social media accounts. However, competitor analysis is a much more nuanced domain. Its focus must be ‘price intelligence.’

In such a context, competitive price monitoring enters the picture. What is it? How can a geographical approach to competition analysis bolster your business? Let us find out!

Competitor analysis is investigating the ins and outs of your enterprise’s rivals. It’s about gaining insight into their products, sales, and marketing strategies. ‘Keep your friends close but your enemies closer’ is the crux of competitor analysis. Redirect your energy and resources towards thoroughly examining your current and potential competition. Thus, it will be easy to zero in on specific claims and hallmarks. It will help distinguish your brand from others.

Closely you understand your arch-nemesis. Thus, your business will be equipped to capitalize on apparent gaps and loopholes. Thus, you can mitigate incoming threats. Furthermore, competition analysis is also essential to stay on top of industry trends. You can gauge prospective opportunities in a timely fashion, ward off competition, and enjoy a larger share of the market profits. In 2023, surviving as a business is more challenging than ever. As a result, sleeping in on intelligence-based competition analysis is a big mistake.

Paying attention to your business’s immediate competitors is obvious and pressing. It is if your entire focus is on what you consider ‘competition’ in the first place. Understand a category disruptor or a business preemptively reinventing the category. If you fail in this, it can vehemently affect your market share and overall profitability. The most straightforward example would be sites like Amazon and Flipkart. They are disrupting the retail domain. However, nobody viewed them as threatening brick-and-mortar businesses in their nascent stages.

Thus, it is best for history not to repeat itself, and in such a context, the Blue Ocean Strategy comes in handy. Coined by Chan Kim and Renee Mauborge in their magnum opus of the same name – Blue Ocean Strategy. The term redefines a category by simultaneously pursuing differentiation and low cost. It is to open up new market spaces and produce novel demands. The Blue Ocean Plan involves building and capturing uncontested markets. It is by viewing the ‘market’ as a boundless and transient phenomenon. Their structures and borders can be reconstructed. It is based on the actions and beliefs of industry players.

The relevance of the ‘Blue Ocean Strategy’ for your business is to attend to the challenge. It is by regularly looking at the industry trends. It is from a broader vantage point and beyond the niche you cater to. Start by talking to consumers you have left your category. It is a simple way to understand if the domain is losing ground. This is about what ‘categories’ beside your own might be your competition.

The pertinent benefits of competitive price monitoring are –

1. Robust competitor analysis is a foolproof forward-looking strategy. It is for enterprises of all scales and types. It helps revise business strategies based on tangible metrics. It is also about insights and amplifying what works.
2. It helps identify your products’ unique forte. It helps to understand what makes them different from the competitors. Its a feat that is crucial for future marketing efforts.
3. Competitor analysis helps gauge the things your rivals are doing right. It is information that is essential to stay relevant. It helps to outperform others within the same race as yours.
4. It helps understand where the competitors are falling short. It enables your enterprise to recognize and capitalize on suitable areas.
5. Competitor analysis and competitive price monitoring are benchmarks. It is against which you can measure your growth.
6. Any business not executing timely and regular competition analysis is at risk. They are not understanding when and why consumers prefer their competitors. They are not recognizing their weaknesses, and not envisaging threats and opportunities. They are not doing it in a timely fashion.

Competitive product analysis involves exploring pertinent differences and similarities. It is about products with the same market niche. Product analysis is especially relevant. It is if you have a competitor that sells products similar to those of your own. The process helps ensure you do not lose market share to competitors at any cost.