COMPETITORANALYSISBOOKLET

organized by AIESEC in Turkey

What is Competitors Analysis?

Competitor Analysis is a strategy where you identify your major competitors and research their products, sales, and marketing strategies. By doing this, you can create solid business strategies that improve upon your competitors.

A competitive analysis is a process of categorizing and evaluating your competitors to understand their strengths and weakness in comparison to your own.

Whatever you do, it is almost certain that there are other companies out there offering a similar product to service to yours.

importance

Advantages & Disadvantages: One of the major reason forcompetitive analysis is to comprehend the strengths andweaknesses of your competition.

Analyzing your competition plays a vital role in shapingyour organization’s strategies. It determines your strengthand shortcomings within the market.

Past, Present & Future Strategies: Analyzing yourcompetitors helps you formulate effective strategies for yourorganization. Knowing where you stand in the marketprovides you early warning to take immediate steps.

Objective & Profile of Competitors: Effective competitoranalysis reveal the objective of your competitors, therebyhelping you learn the best practices from diversified segment.

competitoranalysis

Fundamentals

identify gaps in the market.

Competition is the rivalry between companies selling similar products and services with the goal of achieving revenue, profit, and market share growth.

by Competitor Analysis you can:

develop new products and services.

uncover market trends

market and sell more effectively,

help you take advantage of your competitors’ weakness to grow market share,

help you plan for future investment,

establish what makes your product unique.

How to do a ‘Competitor

Analysis’

Determine who your competitors are

A general overview of a competitor

Determine what products your competitors offer and their consumers

Research your competitor sales tactics and results

Analyze how your competitors market their products

Look at their social media presence, strategies, and go-to platforms

Perform a SWOT analysis

PEST Analysis

Sorting competitors by their performance

How to create a Competitor Analysis Report

Identify areas for improvement

Determine who your competitors are

Direct Competitors: They are businesses that offer a product or service that could pass as a similar substitute for yours and that operate in your same geographic area.

Indirect Competitors: The ones that provide products that are not the same but could satisfy the same customer need or solve the same problem.

Tertiary Competitors: This is someone who sells a product that might be vaguely linked to yours, but does not really compete.

-At least ranking top 10 competitors would be fine.

A general overview of a competitor

Data points to consider; revenue, number of clients, number of offices and locations, number of employees, company history, financial situation,

founding year, the strength of a brand portfolio, past and current strategies, method of distribution, has their market share been increasing

or decreasing, why do they love them, do their employees love them, which events are they attending or organizing.

Determine what products your competitors offer and their consumers

Some questions to consider include:

- Are they a low-cost or high-cost provider?- What is their market share?

- What are characteristics and needs of their ideal customers?- Demographic of customers of your competitor

- Any unique strengths that give a competitor an unfair advantage?

Research your competitor sales tactics and results

You will want to track down the answers to questions such as:- What does the sales process look like?- What channels are they selling through?- Do they have multiple locations and how does this give them an advantage?- What are their customers’ reasons for not buying?- What are their revenues each year?- Do they regularly discount their products and services?

You could find some of this information by searching through your CRM and reachingout to those customers who mentioned they were considering your competitor. Find out what made them choose your product or service over others out there.Walking through customer way

Analyze how your competitors market their products

Analyzing your competitor’s website is the fastest way to gauge their marketing efforts.

Do they have a blog, what kind of contents they publish, are they creating e-books, do they have a podcast, etc.

How customers share stuff about them on twitter, facebook, etc.

Evaluate their customer services’ performance.

Look at their social media presence, strategies, and go-to platforms

The last area you will want to evaluate when it comes to marketing is yourcompetitor’s social media presence and engagement rates. Visit the

following sites to see if your competition has an account on these platforms. Then take note of the following quantitive items from each

platform; number of followers, posting frequency and consistency, content engagement (are users leaving comments or sharing their posts?), content

virality (how many shares or retweets do their posts get?), who are they following(should we follow as well?), do some research about them

(what people thinks about your competitor).

Perform a SWOT analysis

- What is your competitor doing really well with?- Where does your brand have an advantage over your competitor?- What is the weakest area of your competitor?- In what areas would you consider this competitor as a threat?- What are their and your SWOT?

S- Things your organization

does well- Qualities that separate

you from your competitors

- Internal resources such as skilled, knowledgeable staff

- Tangible assets such as intellectual property, capital, proprietary technologies etc.

W- Things your organization

lacks- Things your competitors

do better than you- Resource limitations- Unclear unique selling

proposition

O- Underserved markets for

specific products- Few competitors in your

area- Emerging need for your

products or services- Press/media coverage of

your organization

T- Emerging competitors- Changing regulatory

environment- Negative press/media

coverage- Changing customer

attitudes toward your organization

PEST Analysis

It is an element of risk management that ensures a company is prepared for a change inexternal factors. Will a change be considered an opportunity to do better, or will it be seen as a threat? How will they handle a change? Answer these kinds of questions will demonstrate how your competitors operate, and this can become part of your marketing strategy.

It is a management method whereby an organization can asses major external factorsthat influence its operation in order to become more competitive in the market.Political / Economy / Social / Technological

Sorting competitors by their performance

- Creating some factors to evaluate each of their performance

- Rank the key success factors by giving each one a weighting

Identify areas for improvement

- After performing a competitive analysis, you know have a better idea and understanding of what your competitors doing. Take all the information you gathered about each competitor and identify particular areas of your own work that can be improved. If you are looking closely enough, you are bound to find

something.

- Thinks of features you could eliminate to lower the cost of your solution / think of factors you can reduce way below the industry standard / time to think about the aspects you’ll raise well above the industry

standard / try and create new features that your closest competitors don’t offer

How to create a Competitor Analysis Report

A competitive analysis report outlines the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors compared to those of your own business.

Typically, a competitive analysis report will contain:

- A description of your business’s target market- Details about the features of your product compared to your competitors’ products- A breakdown of current and projected market share, sales, and revenues- Comparisons of pricing models- An analysis of marketing strategy and social

media strategy- A description of customer ratings of the features

of each competitor

A competitive analysis will allow you to think up effective strategies to battle your competition and establish yourself in your target market. A report that communicates the findings of your competitive analysis will ensure stakeholders are on board and in the know.

COMPETITORANALYSISBOOKLET

organized by AIESEC in Turkey