What Is A Competitor Analysis?

Competitor analysis is a strategy where you identify competitors in your industry and research their products, sales and marketing strategies. Competitor analysis helps you identify opportunities for yourself by bringing together what your competitors are doing or not doing right. It allows you to decide and discover how your brand, products or services can differentiate. Thanks to competitor analysis, you can identify gaps in the market, develop new products and services, reveal market trends and sell more effectively.

How To Do A Competitor Analysis?

Various methods are available for performing competitor analysis. We can explain these methods as follows:
SWOT Analysis Method
The word SWOT consists of the initials of the words ‘Strengths’, ‘Weaknesses’, ‘Opportunities’ and ‘Threats’. The SWOT analysis is the process by which each brand owner lists the strengths and weaknesses of his company and analyzes the opportunities and threats in them. With this analysis, it is possible to identify your strengths and weaknesses, maintain your strengths and improve your weaknesses. To carry out a SWOT Analysis, you can start by examining your competitors from your own perspective and from the customer’s perspective.

PEST Analysis Method
The word PEST consists of the initials of the words ‘political’, ‘economic’, ‘social’ and ‘technological’. With this analysis, you can measure the developments of your competitors in the given fields, along with your own development. While SWOT analysis allows you to understand the situation between you and your competitors, PEST analysis allows you to evaluate your competitors’ operational skills and how they are adapting to external conditions.

Competitor Array Method
It is a method that allows you to understand the performance of your competitors. This analysis method can be applied as follows: Defining your industry, Recognizing your competitors, Identifying your target audiences, identifying key success factors, segmenting competitors and assigning points. With this analysis, you can measure your competitors’ contributions to the market. You can shape your marketing and sales strategy accordingly.

What Should A Competitor Analysis Report Include?

Thanks to the competitor analysis report, it will be easier to see how your business will improve itself in terms of performance. One of the most fundamental building blocks in creating the report is identifying the right competitors. Not identifying the right competitors or focusing on the wrong comparisons will cause the competitor analysis and report to not provide any efficiency to the business. Therefore, when preparing a competitor analysis report, businesses need to be very careful about how they will choose their competitors. When creating an ideal competitor analysis report, 3 to 5 competitors should be emphasized in determining competitors. It can be seen that there are thousands of competitors in your market, but you should choose competitors that pose a serious threat to your business.
In the competitor analysis report, some questions can be helped while determining the competitors. According to the answers to these questions, the process of determining competitors will be easier. The questions to be asked are:
Who is the Customer?: Who is the audience you want to reach, sell your products and target?
What is the Problem?: For which target audience does your service or product provide a solution to which problem?
How should the solution be?: How to solve the problem? Is a non-substitute technology or process used to solve the problem?
While preparing the competitor analysis report, it is of great importance to find answers to these questions first.

Why Should The Competitor Analysis Be Done?

Competitor analysis plays a considerable role in the strategy setting processes of companies. It provides a roadmap to follow when making forward plans. It provides the opportunity to make inferences for the future from the current situation of the sector. In addition, this analysis allows you to offer innovative solutions to your customers and target audience. Thus, it makes it possible for all your operations, including price, marketing and advertising strategies, to adapt to the developing industry.
Competitor analysis is a holistic process that needs to be evaluated from multiple perspectives such as price, customer and marketing. For this reason, it is necessary to examine in detail many data of companies in the sector. The conclusions drawn from the data obtained play an important role in the forward planning of the company. Careful execution of each stage of the analysis in question contributes to obtaining the desired efficiency from the process. You can apply competitor analysis methods without wasting time in order for your company to adapt to changes and become a leader in the rapidly developing sector.

When Should The Competitor Analysis Be Done?

The necessity and timing of a competitor analysis may vary according to the process of companies and organizations. However, it can be said that competitor analysis is a type of analysis that can be applied when companies think that they have shortcomings and when they see that they are behind their competitors.