How can market research reveal your competitors' brand positioning?

- Social Media Presence: Scrutinize competitors' social media platforms for messaging, tone, and engagement strategies. - Website Content: Analyze their websites for key value propositions, unique selling points, and target audience focus. - Consistency Check: Evaluate the alignment of messaging across different online channels. - Customer Reviews: Explore customer feedback on social media and review sites for insights into perceived strengths and weaknesses. - Visual Identity: Assess branding elements like logo, color schemes, and imagery for brand identity clues. - Competitor Analysis Tools: Leverage online tools for a more comprehensive evaluation of competitors' digital presence.

Market research can help you understand your competitors' brand positioning by showing you how they present themselves and what customers think about them. You can look at their advertising, social media, and website to see the messages they're sending. Surveys and interviews with customers can tell you what people like or don't like about these brands. This research also shows who buys their products and why. By putting all this information together, you get a clear picture of how your competitors position themselves in the market, like being the cheapest, the highest quality, or the most fun. This helps you make better strategies for your own brand. #MarketResearch #BrandPositioning #CompetitiveAnalysis

Looking into the market can tell us where competitors are placed with their brand. We do this by checking out marketing stuff, customer opinions and prices they use for selling things. Noticing them in various places, knowing their special selling points and recognizing who they're aiming for gives us ideas about how well-known or successful they are.

Professional sites generally contain professional reviews. Places like AppStore or Reddit have genuine reviews about products (especially B2C ones). One step further you should talk and have an in-depth interviews with those negative commenter for the essense of brand on that person (who is engaged enough to leave a comment)

Analyzing your Competitor social platforms, social medias, And website can help you identify their USP/UVP, And understand what is the user experience works for them. by analyzing your competitors you can Get some hints about what will be the best for my brand. Many brands are investing a lot of time and money to understand what will work best for them the best. so why don’t you take the shortcut and use it for your brand? There are some points of why you should do that, but the best one is because you can identify your competitor weaknesses and use i's weaknesses and use them to your advantage.

Conducting a competitor SWOT analysis is like being a detective in the business world. You get to look closely at your rivals - finding out what they're good at (strengths), where they struggle (weaknesses), new chances they might grab (opportunities), and what could trip them up (threats). It's not just about keeping an eye on the competition; it's about using what you learn to make your own business smarter and stronger. Think of it as a game where every clue you find helps you play better and stay one step ahead.

- Strengths: Identify competitor's unique strengths in product quality, brand recognition, or market share. - Weaknesses: Examine areas where competitors may lack, such as customer service issues or outdated technology. - Opportunities: Assess market trends or gaps competitors haven't capitalized on yet. - Threats: Analyze external factors like economic shifts or emerging competitors that could pose challenges. - SWOT Matrix: Summarize findings in a SWOT matrix for a clear visual representation. - Actionable Insights: Use SWOT analysis to inform strategic decisions and refine your own brand positioning.

Competitor SWOT Analysis for Brand Positioning: Strengths: > Identify Unique Selling Points (USPs). > Assess brand reputation and market share. Weaknesses: > Identify vulnerabilities and limitations. > Analyze customer complaints and operational inefficiencies. Opportunities: > Evaluate response to emerging market trends. > Assess adaptability to industry changes. Threats: > Identify challenges such as regulatory issues and economic downturns. > Evaluate response mechanisms to external threats.

Strategies for unraveling competitors' brand positioning involve a blend of quantitative and qualitative approaches. Conduct in-depth competitor analysis by leveraging tools like SWOT analysis Explore customer feedback through surveys and reviews to gauge perceptions. Track competitors' online presence, social media activities, and content strategies. Furthermore, assess customer experiences firsthand and monitor competitors' pricing strategies. Stay updated on industry trends, attend relevant events, and analyze competitors' partnerships and collaborations. Integrating these strategies creates a robust framework for deciphering competitors' brand positioning and informing strategic decisions.

SWOT analysis is so important because it compares internal and external weaknesses and strengths. Those factors are separated into four different parameters strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. you probably asking why it is so important, and the reason is that it shows you where you are good at as a brand or a company and what you need to improve compared to the market. That will ensure that you are safe in the competition, that will help you to identify your internal and external weaknesses and to know better how to position yourself compared to the market.

- Customer Surveys: Deploy targeted surveys to gauge perceptions of competitors among your customer base. - Key Questions: Include queries on competitors' strengths, weaknesses, and factors influencing customer choices. - Segment Responses: Analyze data based on demographics, preferences, and loyalty to uncover patterns. - Feedback Channels: Leverage customer service interactions and online reviews for additional insights. - Benchmarking: Compare customer perceptions with competitors to identify areas for differentiation. - Iterative Process: Regularly update surveys to track evolving customer sentiments and stay ahead in understanding competitors' brand positioning.

I typically suggest executing research in three steps: - Start by having open-ended conversations with a handful of individuals in the vicinity of your target audience, ideally people from your network who would be candid and open to help, in order to identify the best questions to ask. - Refine your questions by testing them qualitatively with a slightly larger number of people that closely match the profile of your potential customers. - Once you have a solid questionnaire, consider running a survey to get more quantitative data from your target market.

I recommend adding one question in all your sales calls, "Which other tools are you considering and why?". This question coupled with their goals and objectives will help you understand more about the perspective in the minds of your potential customers because they also have done research about your competitors and they'll give you the best idea about what the first impressions of competitors looks like.

Often better, more honest results are yielded if you focus on observation rather than surveys. I am a huge fan of ?social listening“ i.e. plugging into the digital conversations that happen around a brand. As it tells you not only how the communicator (the brand) wants to position itself but more so how the listener (customers) really perceive it. I find this exercise helpful outside of the company as well as inside, as your employees are your brand carriers to the outside.

Some ways I did while I built my first venture:- 1. Google forms - the most outdated way to get the responses and most inefficient. You will never get a clear picture of the customer persona and customer psych 2. Newsletters- this surprisingly worked well because I started getting replies and that's when I use to start conversations- meaningful conversations! 3. Direct interactions- this is the best way to do user research, you get first hand info :)

- Identify Key Competitors: Select main competitors for analysis. - Determine Evaluation Criteria: Choose factors influencing brand perception, like quality or price. - Gather Customer Feedback: Utilize surveys or reviews to collect data on how customers perceive competitors. - Plot on Perceptual Map: Map competitors based on identified criteria, showcasing relative positions. - Analyze Distances: Evaluate the distances between brands to identify gaps or areas of overlap. - Strategic Insights: Gain insights into how competitors are perceived and strategically position your brand relative to them.

Market research can unveil competitors' brand positioning through perceptual mapping. By analyzing customer perceptions and preferences, a perceptual map plots various brands' positions relative to each other based on attributes important to consumers. This visual tool helps identify where competitors stand in consumers' minds, showcasing strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for your brand's positioning strategy.

When doing research, a lot of text can be hard to make sense of. Most people learn visually. What might help, is to create a perceptual map, to show your position compared to what else is being offered.

This is a continuous effort. I love using chat GPT for repeat research and updates to save time and compare apples to apples. You chan even set up a market tracker GPT for your specific needs. That’s what I do ;)

Some additional points, 1. Industry Reports and News: This reveals trends, competitor partnerships, and potential disruptions that could impact their positioning. 2. Competitive Intelligence Tools: Consider using dedicated competitive intelligence tools to track competitor marketing campaigns, website changes, and social media activity. This real-time data paints a dynamic picture of their strategies. Remember, market research is an ongoing process. By being a keen observer and skilled decoder, you can navigate the competitive landscape with confidence and carve out your unique space in the market. That's my perspective on using market research to crack the code on competitor positioning. #marketresearch #entrepreneurship

Use Internet Archive / Wayback Machine to analyze how your competitor’s website has evolved over time: - How has their brand changed? - What messaging have they doubled down on? - Which things have they removed? I have seen instances where a company brags about their number of customers on their website - by using Wayback machine and analyzing how this number changes over time, you can derive your competitor’s growth rate.

Talk to founders in the same space- they could be founders of some really big companies. They, at once seem unreachable and honestly, they are in some way- but believe me- cold messaging and cold email works! I got my mentor(s) by a cold message.

Uncover subtle clues about their brand positioning by analyzing customer reviews and deciphering the tone and language they use. Dive deep into industry forums and subtly extract insights from discussions. Create a comprehensive comparison chart that outlines key elements of your competitors' brand positioning against your own. This will help identify gaps and opportunities for differentiation. #competitiveedge