What are some common methods for conducting a competitive landscape analysis?

2 Categorize your competitors

Once you have a list of competitors, you can categorize them according to their relevance, threat level, and differentiation. Relevance refers to how closely they match your value proposition and customer needs. Threat level refers to how likely they are to take away your market share or customers. Differentiation refers to how unique or innovative they are compared to you and others. You can use a matrix or a quadrant to plot your competitors along these dimensions and see where you stand in relation to them. This can help you identify your main rivals, your potential allies, and your niche segments.

3 Analyze your competitors

After categorizing your competitors, you can dive deeper into analyzing their strengths and weaknesses, their strategies and positioning, and their performance and growth. You can use various sources of information, such as their websites, social media, reviews, testimonials, case studies, press releases, blogs, podcasts, webinars, etc. to gather data on their products or services, their features and benefits, their pricing and packaging, their target audience and value proposition, their marketing and sales channels, their customer service and support, their brand identity and voice, their mission and vision, their goals and objectives, their culture and values, etc. You can also use tools like SWOT analysis, Porter's five forces analysis, or PESTEL analysis to assess their internal and external factors that affect their competitiveness.

4 Benchmark your competitors

The next step in a competitive landscape analysis is to benchmark your competitors against yourself and each other. You can use metrics and indicators, such as market share, revenue, growth rate, customer satisfaction, retention, loyalty, referrals, churn, acquisition cost, lifetime value, etc. to measure and compare their performance and success. You can also use tools like scorecards, spider charts, or radar charts to visualize and compare their attributes and capabilities. This can help you identify your strengths and weaknesses, your opportunities and threats, and your gaps and advantages.

5 Learn from your competitors

The final step in a competitive landscape analysis is to learn from your competitors and use the insights to improve your own product or service, strategy and positioning, and performance and growth. To guide this process, consider best practices and trends in your industry that you can adopt or adapt, common mistakes that you can avoid or overcome, unmet customer needs that you can address or solve, innovative features of your competitors that you can match or exceed, weaknesses of your competitors that you can exploit or capitalize on, and opportunities or threats in your market or environment that you can seize or mitigate. Conducting a competitive landscape analysis provides a comprehensive and objective view of your industry, market, and competitors. This information and knowledge can be used to create or refine your product or service, strategy and positioning, and performance and growth. It is important to remember that a competitive landscape analysis is an ongoing process which needs regular updates and revisions to keep up with the competition. By staying aware of what your competitors are doing, you can stay ahead of the curve and deliver value to customers.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?