The Competitive Analysis Stack

Customers evaluate your products relative to competing products. So use a structured approach to assess competitors. (Hint, it’s not just a feature matrix.)

Pick the top 2 competitors and analyze each using this stack. (Don’t forget that a key competitor may not be a competitor at all, but rather, a non-product substitute for the value that your product would provide.) 

Positioning

What mind-space (accepted value proposition) do competitors hold in the customer’s mind. (e.g.: most current; easiest to use; most cost effective; etc.) Why?

Value System

Assess not just benefits and features, but the entire product value system of competitor products (including such things as service, distribution, integration, etc.) Any of these may represent a key competitive factor that you must address.

Business Stance

Assess competitor performance, funding, spending, marketing/sales details, and business objectives.

PEST

Add critical context by assessing the Political/Legal, Economic, Social, and Technological trends that are impacting competitors (and you).

Strategic SWOT

Competitor SWOT is not just their catalog of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats- but an assessment of the approaches that competitors are/may implement to leverage strengths against their opportunities and threats, as well as how they are/will mitigate weaknesses against opportunities and strengths.

A more in-depth understanding of competitors can point the way to improved positioning, selling, and market performance for your product.

Post Launch, No One is Patient for Results

Your products were built with a good understanding of the market, came out well, and you launched them (or are in the process). You have some traction, but you need to keep improving the results. And no one is patient about it.

A ‘Lithe’ approach to continuous improvement leads you to gracefully adapt to market realities. 

Objectives

Establish what you want to accomplish in the market, e.g.: Grow customer base; Increase revenue per user/transaction; Etc. [more]

Dynamics

Determine what is happening in your market right now, looking at such things as: Average sale trends; Competitor analysis/ trajectory; Etc. [more]

Root Causes

Assess what is behind the results you are currently seeing, e.g.: Price/ price model/ price-feature mix/ bundling; Purchase experience issues; Etc. [more]

Market Mix Options

Adjust any of the options you have at your disposal, including: Product; Place; Price; Promotion; & for services: People; Process; Physical Evidence [more]

Achieving market success is a never ending process. Following a cyclical, flexible, nimble approach assures that you can lithely accommodate impatience with intelligent, ongoing market decision making. [more]

If Your Message isn’t Relevant, the Medium Doesn’t Matter

Notwithstanding Marshal McLuhan’s famous pronouncement that: “The medium is the message”, the message is actually the most important thing when it comes to product marketing. Without relevance, even your most creative messages won’t be heard.

6% of marketing program failures are due to poor advertising methods or vehicles, while 94% result from going to the market with a poor marketing message. Here’s how segmentation and positioning feed your construction of a messaging platform that can defeat the odds:

Segmentation

Answer these questions: whom will we serve; what are the jobs they need done; what pains and potential gains do they have; which are users, buyers, or influencers; how many are there and where; what are their current behaviors & product use; how do they make purchase decisions; etc. Create personas for each.

Positioning

As Jack Trout puts it: “Your customers are already either strongly or weakly held by competitors”. Even if customers don’t presently use the competitive product, that product still holds a place in the customer’s mind against which your product will be compared. This is a hurdle that your competitor controls. Positioning is a matter of staking claim to new ground (think benefits) that your competitor doesn’t already own. (You go around the hurdle.) Not just better- different.

Messaging Platform

For each target segment define: your benefits (based upon your positioning), how you’re differentiated from competition, and information that supports your key points. From these stacks, create your messages. Remember, messaging is not ad copy- that comes later. The messaging platform is simply a set of clear statements that define the story you want to tell to each segment. It becomes the map from which promotions, advertising, and sales approaches are plotted, and which can also keep the product development team focused on the core objectives of the product. 

With differentiated messages that are well positioned for your segments, your media can be relevant enough to be heard by customers. 

Do you have a ‘chasm’ in your market to get over?

Often there are differences in how readily customers will adopt your product. Early adopters may exhibit very different purchase criteria than later adopters. If so, you have a ‘chasm’.

The chasm concept comes from Geoffrey Moore’s ground breaking book, Crossing The Chasm, and normally applies to the adoption of high-tech products. But more broadly, the concept can be used to think about how your value proposition may need to evolve in order to appeal to the more reluctant adopters of your product- who typically make up the majority of your potential market. If adoption of your product has stalled, you may have a chasm to cross. Here are three things to ponder:

Receptivity

Are some customers anxious for the change my product will bring, while others are relatively satisfied with the status quo? (Gather input from a broad cross-section of the market- not just enthusiasts. Here, qualitative research techniques work best.)

Refinement

What further value/refinement/relevance might be needed to make the product appealing to those less-anxious customers? (e.g.: a different business model; additional features; better integration with customer’s existing workflow; etc.)

Review

How can we test these assumptions? (Make the proposed ‘solution’ as tangible as possible, e.g. via rapid prototyping, and engage non-early-adopters directly to assess its value to them.)

However tightly circumscribed, your market is probably not monolithic. Don’t be deceived by the enthusiasm of early adopters. Find those who are less-anxious in order to understand how what they value may differ.