How can you use your competitor's customer journey to improve your own?

A common framework to work from when determining your marketing goals and objectives is applying S.M.A.R.T your goals need to be Specific Measurable Attainable Relevant Time bound

To grasp a competitor's customer journey, start by pinpointing the targeted customer segments, considering factors like the audience, offered products/services, and their interplay. Subsequently, delve into the steps and processes within each segment of the customer experience, identifying points of contact, understanding buying process navigation, and analyzing feedback received during customer journeys.

Competetors customer journey can very well be known through FGD (Focus Group Discussion) with competitor product users. Key objective should be to identify the Pain Points. Once done, we can run simulation test on our products to see if any such pain points are there in our products/services. Moreover, through FGD, if we can find any positive points in competitors’ customer Journey, we can adapt those in our product value propositions as well.

Customer is the most essential part of the Business to become successful. The important factor to understand customer is the motivation. What motivates the customer to buy a product. Differentiate their needs and wants, understand their concerns or risk involved in their buying decisions and help customers provide all possible information about the product. At this stage, understanding competition and showcasing the comparative analysis between our own product and other competitors would aid customers in taking certain decision. It may or may not be possible to have competitor's customers journey. But if we have it would give us idea to track touchpoints. And it would be great to leverage those opportunities to generate more revenue.

You can use your competitor's customer journey to improve your own by conducting a thorough analysis of their processes and identifying areas of strength and weakness. Start by understanding the key touchpoints in their customer journey, such as awareness, consideration, purchase, and post-purchase stages. Identify what they do well and where they may be lacking.

Having a solid understanding of who is buying from your competitors, and / or who your competitors are targeting is a very helpful marketing tool. This can help you identify potential new business opportunities, new audience segments and new positioning strategies that you can leverage to more effectively compete. Whether that’s identifying a new segment where you core value proposition is strong, or whether it presents the opportunity to help you effectively differentiate and promote your USPs. You can use these insights to help build a new, potentially more impactful messaging house and targeting strategy.

Understanding your competitions audience gives you insight on the best product positioning strategy to suit your audience demography , behaviors and preferences . Also helps you gain clarity on how best to present your product’s USP targeting the same market in a way that’s convincing enough for them to choose your product over the competitors product

I don't think you can get a great view of who is ACTUALLY buying from your competitor at all. Better to spend time interviewing your own ACTUAL customers.

To extract any real value from your Competitor's customer personas, you need to be crystal clear on who your ACTUAL competitors are. Are you looking at the guy next to you on the high street, or are you looking at an 'aspirational' retailer set? Either is fine, but you need to know with which group you are truly competing, for sales. If the overall objective is to improve your customer journey, my advice is to have two strands of 'competitors' that you regularly benchmark - your direct trading competitors (with whom you compete on price, range etc) and your best-in-class competitors (the retailers doing it better, who you can learn from).

It's very important to understand INTENT here. What made the competitors' customers choose their products or services - price, value add, brand recognition/loyalty and work backwards to analyze their journey. It is also important to analyze the competitors communication and marketing channels - this helps in understanding their successes and failures and provides a roadmap that can be customized based on your brand, products or services.

The easiest way to do this is by entering the competitors marketing funnel - go to their website and let their tracking codes tag your device and subscribe to their newsletter. Now you'll be able to see what kinds of emails they send, their communication, the frequency, the value proposition etc. Similarly, you'll be able to see what channels they use to remarket - while you're browsing social media, YouTube, or web pages. You can also used tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs to see where they get their traffic from and identify non-owned assets that contribute to their growth.

The easiest way to analyze your competitors' touchpoints is to go inside their funnel and wait. For example, if you want to understand their current Meta Ad campaign, interact with their ads on Facebook: like, comment, click, view their website content, add to cart, check-out, and then abandon cart. Look out for their new ads when you become a warm audience. Analyze the offer, the creative, the flows, and the frequency. The same approach applies to their email strategy and flows; subscribe to your competitor's newsletter.

Analyser les forces et les faiblesses de vos concurrents vous êtes plus apte à identifier les opportunités de développement de votre marque.

You can also view competitors' ads right within social platforms. On Facebook, you can use the Facebook Ads library and then use the search ad module to view competitor ads. For LinkedIn, navigate to posts on your competitor's company page, then select the ads tab. This gives you insight into their ad creative and any promotional campaigns they may be running.

ldentify not just where competitors interact with customers, but also how effective these interactions are. For example, if competitors use email marketing heavily but with low engagement rates, consider exploring more engaging channels like social media or webinars for your audience.

Assess how your competitors position themselves in the market. Are they targeting a specific niche, focusing on affordability, or emphasizing premium quality? Understanding their positioning can help you differentiate your business.

Rethink the way your competitor is approaching the market. Are they missing a potential angle to get the market or are they weak in an area that you can concentrate on. Run with this idea that will likely win you a segment of the market that was either undecided or untouched.

Look for patterns in customer feedback about your competitor. Are there recurring complaints about their customer service? Or consistent praise for their user-friendly website? Use these insights to strengthen your weak areas and capitalize on their shortcomings.

Look at what they're nailing – is it their killer social media presence, their on-point customer service, or something else? And where are they slipping? Maybe their website's a maze or their emails are yawn-worthy. Think about their unique flavor – how do they stand out in the crowd, and how do they stack up against you? Dive into how they're pitching themselves – are they hitting the mark in solving customer problems? And trust – that's a big one. How are they building those bonds of loyalty with their customers?

For customer attraction, strengths include effective marketing and a strong online presence, while weaknesses may involve limited reach and outdated strategies. Converting customers relies on a clear value proposition and seamless processes as strengths, with weaknesses in complex checkouts or inconsistent pricing. Retaining customers involves strengths like loyalty programs and excellent service, but weaknesses may include a lack of personalized strategies or product quality issues. To differentiate, competitors emphasize unique features or strong brand positioning. Communication clarity and addressing customer pain points build trust. Regular adaptation to trends is vital in the dynamic business landscape.

Use your competitor's customer journey as a benchmark but don't just imitate. If they excel in fast shipping, you might focus on providing unparalleled post-purchase support or creating a more engaging unboxing experience. The goal is to differentiate while elevating your own customer journey.

Use a spreadsheet or whiteboard to go step-by-step comparing your customer journey to the competitor's. -Advertisements -Value Proposition -Funnel & Customer Onboarding -Pricing -Post-purchase Experience -Retention and Post-Sale Marketing

I agree! Many people are with the mindset that you have to come up with fresh ideas solely. Not the case, if we just consider how million of things we own today started of from someone's idea, was leveraged and improved. Not to dtay that one should copy and paste, rather learn and grow.

One of the benchmarks for customer journey paths when comparing competitors is total speed / steps of the journey. If you can make a faster and more frictionless journey than competitors, you win. Counting the days, steps, hours, etc. a competitor's customer journey takes is a valuable activity for any marketer or sales leader.

In addition to benchmarking your own customer journey against the competitor as one of the steps suggested, I would also consider how new customers are onboarded in a way that facilitates product adoption. There could be opportunities to differentiate from the competitor, fill gaps that may have been missed or upsell product offering with a new release that seamlessly ties into the customer journey. Of course, replicating the journey is not the answer, rather finding ways to differentiate from the competitor yet providing value to the customer aligned with your own brand and business objectives. Finally, constant monitoring and using data-based evidence to adjust and pivot the journey is essential in maintaining value.

Besides the steps mentioned, one thing I've found really impactful is embracing tech like AI and big data. It's about digging deeper into what customers really want, sometimes in ways they might not even realize. Imagine using AI to spot trends in customer behavior that are super subtle but super important. And think about how cool it would be to use things like AR/VR to make the customer experience really pop and stand out from the crowd. It's not just about keeping up with the Joneses (or in this case, the competitors); it's about being the one they're trying to keep up with!

Beyond the aforementioned steps, incorporating behavioral data into your optimization strategy for customer journeys is crucial. While competitors may seem similar, it’s important to recognize that their user cohorts may differ significantly. Ensure you take this nuance into consideration and embrace personalization as a key component of your approach.

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It's not possible to get the exact metrics and performance of how users behave, engage and purchase from any competition. A comparative analysis between your digital touchpoints and of competition can help with a set of features and user benefits that can be improvised or adapted to suit your business needs. User performance gathered through tools like SimilarWeb, Semrush and Sprinklr can be correlated with competition offers, price updates, sales data to help understand the consumer preferences. This can help you to build your own hypothesis and test them out. You know your business best, so having a data driven approach will benefit in the longer run, execute small experiments and see what works for your brand or business.