They say comparison is the thief of joy, but regular self-help wisdom doesn’t apply to brands. As a brand, you should worry what people say behind your back, you must obsess over those who have the upper hand, and it’s literally your duty to make a science out of comparing yourself to others.
It’s actually a lack of comparison that will rob you … if not of joy, then certainly of actual money (possibly in the millions).
Even the brands that seem blissfully unbothered by the state of the competition are in fact feverishly treading water just under the surface, desperately trying to maintain or improve their rank in the eyes of consumers. They’re constantly analyzing, strategizing, and sizing up other brands, hoping to discover market gaps and fill unmet needs before someone else does.
This is exactly what you should be doing—and you need to inform your business strategy with authentic consumer insights. It can be a daunting process, but the alternative is failing to learn what’s necessary to make the right decisions.
Some very good news: You don’t have to burn through your budget by hiring an entire research team! Comprehensive product intelligence platforms (like Highlight’s) make it much, much easier to conduct competitor analysis and find out what real shoppers think.
Competitor analysis is the process of studying companies that sell products rivaling yours in some way. What are these companies’ branding strategies, pricing strategies, and market positioning? How can this information help you better position your own product and better communicate its differentiating factors?
Some things you’ll want to investigate about your competitors:
Also, take a look at the market that you and your competitors find yourselves in. Here are some product competitor analysis example questions that will help you understand your market better:
(Psst! Highlight’s Audience Profiler and White Space Exploration are two great research methodologies for answering these key business questions.)
With competitor product analysis, you’ll identify trends, opportunities, and threats to your market share early on—while these are still addressable. You’ll also learn how to better hone your claims to capture shoppers who are dissatisfied with the current offering.
Even more importantly, knowing how you stack up against your competitors is essential for divulging the hidden, unmet needs of consumers and devising your brand’s unique way of meeting these needs. This is known as your “competitive differentiation.”
No matter how much of a monopoly your competitors may appear to have in their niche, there’s always something more that people are looking for. It’s your job to figure out what that is, and how to meet it successfully.
One of the biggest challenges in analyzing the competition is figuring out where to begin. There’s so much to know, and a lot of the most useful things are kept secret, such as the minutiae of product positioning strategies. But for everything you’re not privy to, there are ways to do some sleuthing.
Here’s a quick roadmap for how to do competitor analysis for a product.
Be sure to analyze both large and small competitors, since these will threaten your turf in different ways. Smaller brands tend to be more agile and innovative, while the larger ones have the budget to be bigger trendsetters.
Looking for an example? See how Simply Gum used the Highlight platform to understand what shoppers really thought about their product when side-by-side on shelf with their competitors.
Aside from the fact that gathering all the right information on your many competitors may feel like a gargantuan task, here are some barriers you’ll need to overcome:
Fortunately, Highlight’s comprehensive product intelligence platform can take a lot of the guesswork out of competitor analysis, and it can streamline the process significantly, too. Advanced data analytics combined with insights from a dedicated community of testers will help you make informed decisions and stay one step ahead.
Like a game of chess, getting a glimpse into how your competitors are strategizing demands a strategy from you in turn. So, what’s your response going to be? Will you position yourself as the lower-cost option, puff yourself up as the better-quality option, or carve out your own niche altogether?
At Highlight, we won’t make these decisions for you, but we’ll give you solid data to point you in a promising direction. And then, as soon as you commit to a move, we’ll be by your side helping you meticulously test that new strategy to ensure it works as intended.