How to run competitor research? Watch our webinar to learn easy steps to spy on your competitors.
Competitor analysis is a key asset for business development success.
Knowing your competitors will help you find the right customers, open more channels and diversify yourself.
The process doesn't need to be complicated and this webinar will help run your research in a few simple steps.
The founder of The BD School, Lucia, is the speaker of this webinar. With 15 years of experience in business development, she experienced firsthand the pains and gains of being a business development pro.
In 2018 she created The BD School, with the goal of creating a safe place where business developers could learn, share experiences, and advance their business development careers.
These are the main takeaways from the webinar.
Key takeaways from the competitor analysis webinar:
Lucia shared many tips on how to run competitor analysis during the webinar. Here are the main takeaways.
1 – What is a competitor?
Before you do competitor analysis, you need to know what a competitor is.
Competitors are other businesses that provide similar products or services to you.
There are three types of competitors.
The first one is direct competitors.
An example of direct competition is McDonald’s and Burger King as they both provide the same type of fast food.
The second type is indirect competitors.
An example of indirect competitors is McDonald’s and Domino's. They both offer fast food but of different types (burgers vs pizzas).
The third type is potential competitors.
These are newcomers who could disrupt your presence in the market.
Once you know your competitors, you can analyze them.
Competitor analysis means your competitor’s strategies, strengths, and weaknesses in relation to your product or service.
2 – The process of competitor analysis
Now that you know the types of competitors, you can start searching for the competitors of your business.
There are three main steps to the process of competitor analysis: identifying, analyzing, and assessing.
The first step is to identify your competitors. At this stage, you can use various platforms.
For example, you can use LinkedIn to browse your competitors.
The second step is to analyze. At this stage, you should analyze relevant people, products and services, value propositions, marketing channels, customer feedback, and revenue.
Also, try to understand what their value propositions are. In this way, you’ll learn the results your competitor promises to customers and what they see as valuable.
Further, look at the marketing channels they’re using and identify what type of audience they’re talking to.
To keep your research organized, use a business development plan. The BD Plan is a key document that helps you map your ecosystem and find new growth opportunities.
You can download our template at this link. And if you want personalized guidance, join the business development course.
The third and final step is to assess your competitors in order to understand if they’re a threat to your business. At this stage, it can be useful to do a SWOT analysis.
So, find out their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Then, organize the data. On the platform, you will also find a template that you can use for this purpose.
3 – How to use competitor analysis data
Once you collect and analyze the data, you can use the insights to create transformational opportunities. These will be different for each of you, but let’s look at some examples.
Let’s assume you have only one main competitor which has a resource you really need. On your side, you also have a resource that your competitor doesn’t have.
You both need these resources in order to grow.
In this case, a smart thing to do is the so-called: “coopetition”. This is when there is cooperation between competitors to get mutual benefits.
For example, Pfizer and BioNTech cooperated together in the creation of the vaccine against Covid-19. They are competitors within similar industries, but they joined forces in order to serve the greater good (and of course, generate revenue).
This shows that a company can be strong in a specific area, but weaker in another. So, when two competitors work together, they balance each other out.
Apart from coopetition, you can use the data to generate more opportunities.
For example, you can contact unsatisfied customers, adjust your price to be lower than your competitor’s, create new features, or start using the same channels.
Some useful tools are Similarweb, Owler, and SpyFu.
If you would like to increase your value as a business development pro, this is the time to become a certified BD Pro.
