Stephen Houraghan here at BrandMasterAcademy.com and in this video you're going to learn how to
do competitive analysis with this reliable 14-step framework now let's be honest competitive analysis
is not the most exciting topic in the world now don't get me wrong there might be a couple of
people out there who just love the idea and can't wait to get out of bed and research the life out
of their competitors but that's not me and it's probably not you either but here's the thing
if you want to build a brand if you want to build a strategic brand
that sits in the mind of your audience then it is absolutely necessary for you
to complete a competitive analysis and an effective competitive analysis you see there are
up to 200 million businesses in the world give or take one or two and they're all selling services
products and they're all trying to stand out in the marketplace and smart businesses understand
this they understand that when they go into a marketplace there are many other businesses
trying to compete for their shared audience and if they don't understand what their competitors
are doing if they don't understand what their audience has as an option in the market already
then they're not going to be able to position their brand effectively to stand out in the mind
of their audience consumers in every industry are spoiled for choice today and that's what
competitive analysis is all about it's all about understanding those choices
the choices that your audience has already in the marketplace so you can start to identify
what they're doing well and what they're not doing well so you can make decisions for your brand and
this is all about getting into the nitty-gritty of who your competitors are what they're doing
well their differentiator their big idea so there is a lot of legwork involved but it's not all bad
either because if you have a framework in place if you have a step-by-step formula then it's just
about following those steps one at a time and then it becomes relatively straightforward and
if that's not incentive enough for you to go out there and start researching your competitors then
know this there is gold in competitive analysis in researching who your competitors are and what
they're doing well patterns start to appear and those patterns represent opportunity
now any brand going into the marketplace without doing this kind of reconnaissance
is just not going to survive it's just as simple as that there are already competitors
in whatever marketplace you're going into and there's probably a hierarchy of competitors
in there with some top dogs representing sharks and they have the attention of your audience so
a brand going into the market without the information of what their competitors are
doing and what their audience likes and dislikes about what they're doing is just not going to have
the information that they need to make effective decisions for the positioning of their brand
brand builders that build brands strategically go out into the marketplace and they experience
the competitors as a consumer they really go undercover and go and experience each and every
one of their competitors to see what they're doing to see what they're doing well to look
at their offers their differentiator how they're treating their customers the overall experience
of the brand and then they use that information to make those critical decisions and the information
that they gather can answer questions along the lines of what opportunities exist what are the
gaps in the market how do we fill those gaps what are the market trends what features should we
focus on what benefits do we promote how does our audience feel where is our audience being let down
how can we stand apart from our competitors without an effective competitive analysis the
answers to these questions would just be guesses and that's not reliable information to make these
critical decisions on the information that you get throughout this competitive analysis will help you
map the market landscape and it's going to be the basis for all your positioning strategy decisions
it'll give you information such as similarities differences strengths weaknesses audience
preferences offers customer sentiment features benefits value price points differentiators and
market positions and the point of gathering all of this information is quite simple you want to find
insights gaps opportunities in the market that you can use to find a differentiator so you can stand
out in the marketplace to your audience now the first step in your competitive analysis framework
is to create a data capturing tool now this is the easiest step in the entire framework quite
simply you just need to open up a new spreadsheet and create three titles in the first three columns
which should be number name and category but what this is is a tool for you to gather all
of the information that you need to know about your competitors which you'll then later analyze
to make those critical decisions step number two identify your top 10 competitors now the easiest
way to start this process is to jump onto google type in what you do and where you are and then
start gathering the information that google gives you but the key here is relevancy if you type in
what you do and where you are and you get a list of multinationals and you're a little startup that
can compete with that well then they're not your most relevant competitors for example if you open
up a quirky book cafe and you have mcdonald's down the road who are also selling coffee but you have
a hipster cafe around the corner well then that hipster cafe is going to be the more relevant
competitor to what you do because you share the same audience so the key here about identifying
your top 10 competitors is to make sure that they are the most relevant competitors to what you do
step number three you want to categorize your competitors now once you've gathered your top
10 you want to go through those top 10 and start categorizing them one by one and they fall under
three different categories so your first is your primary competitors now these are your
most relevant competitors as i alluded to before so if you're the book cafe then your hipster cafe
around the corner is going to be the most relevant now the secondary competitors are the competitors
that solve the same problem but they do that with a different solution and then you have your
tertiary competitors who solve a related problem with a different solution but they can be seen as
an alternative to what you do so go through your top 10 competitors and categorize them one by one
but remember the key here with your competitors you want to find the most relevant competitors so
the majority of your top 10 should fall under under that primary competitor category
step number four you want to go out and experience each and every one of your top 10 competitors
as a consumer so put your consumer hat on visit their websites their social media pages and every
single touch point that each and every one of your competitors has so you can experience their brand
as a consumer as your shared audience and that will give you a great perspective of what's out
in the marketplace step number five you want to analyze their visual brands so you're going to
find most of your competitors online so you're going to do most of this digitally but if you do
have a physical location and your competitors have physical locations then go and visit their stores
and pick up any physical branded content that they might have but what you're looking for here
is their logo their color palette their typography maybe their image style and you want to identify
through these visuals what are they communicating what message are they sending out are they sending
out any characteristics within their visuals do they have personality so have a look at all the
elements of their visual brand and see if you can identify any of that messaging or any of those
characteristics within their brand step number six you want to study their messaging so
on their website on their social pages if you have that physical branded content go through all of
the information go through all of their messaging and what you're looking for here are themes
you want to find key benefits descriptors of their audience differentiators that they might
have and then study how they're delivering this message are they delivering it through
simple fact sharing is it bland messaging or are they using engaging storytelling step number
seven examine their human brand persona now if your competitors have taken the time to develop
their brands strategically then they should have adopted a human persona for their brand so they
should be displaying characteristics through their personality so check these out see if they align
with their visual brand look at the languages they're using is it corporate is it conversational
and look at the tone that they're using as well is it professional or is it playful so
really dig underneath their personality trying to identify those characteristics and see if
those characteristics align with their visual brand as well step number eight engage in their
content strategy so do they have a blog do they have a youtube channel are they producing videos
are they producing articles if so what type of content is it are they helping their audience
with techniques and processes or are they just creating content for the sake of creating content
what about their social channels are they creating content just for likes or are they actually going
out there and generating conversations so really get into their content strategy
and see what they're doing with that step number nine you want to analyze their marketing strategy
so have a look at their advertising are they advertising where they advertise and how do
they promote their advertising what about free content are they giving anything away on their
website do they have a lead magnet if they do follow that rabbit hole go through their calls
to action go through their opt-in page and have a look at the emails that come through on the back
of that and really start to dig into how they're promoting their brand how they're advertising
to their audience in order to generate looks and generate that traffic to their website step number
10 you want to experience their offers now as you go through their brand as you experience their
brand you're going to see offers throughout their content at least you should anyway so
they're gonna put some kind of offer in front of you to become a customer so how are those offers
structured are they offering free trials is there a low-cost entry point into becoming a customer
are they offering discounts or is their messaging justifying their premium position so how is all of
that coming together how is their offer being put in front of you and how are they incentivizing you
to become a customer step number 11 uncover their differentiator and their positioning strategy now
all of the work that you've done up until step 11 your first 10 steps will give you a
very very good picture of the overall marketing landscape and your individual competitors now
this step is about identifying what each and every one of them do differently and what you're looking
for here are underlying themes they should be consistently attempting to position themselves
in the mind of your shared audience through a very specific differentiator and if they have
an effective communication strategy it should be easy to find what this is if it's not easy to find
what they're saying they do differently and you're actually looking for through your analysis then
it's not going to be easy for your audience to understand either so if you can't find it easily
then it's not your fault it's their fault but what you really want to do is identify each and
every one of the differentiators from your top 10 competitors step number 12 study their fulfillment
and their customer service so once you become a customer then they're going to bring you through a
certain process they're going to bring you through a specific onboarding process to introduce you to
their brand as a new customer now you want to follow down the rabbit hole as far as you can
go on this and hopefully you've got a little bit of budget to be able to buy at least their
entry level products so you can really experience what it's like to be a customer now if you've got
a decent budget you might be able to do this for all 10 of your competitors but even having a small
budget to do this for your top three is a really really valuable process to go through and even if
your entry level products for your top three competitors are around about three hundred dollars
then that's a nine hundred dollar investment for you to see what your top three competitors are
doing through their onboarding process so it's a really really good investment to do this
and you want to really get in there and speak to their customer service operators really become a
customer and start to feel what it's like really experience their brand as a customer and this will
give you some tremendous insights for what they're doing with their customers as a new customer
comes on board step number 13 you want to analyze reviews out there in the marketplace now this step
is an absolute goldmine of information when it comes to making decisions for your own brand for
your own positioning strategies because these reviews are emotionally charged and that's what
you're looking for you want your shared audience to get emotional about the products that are out
there in the marketplace and these reviews certainly do that so this is a window into
their mind and what you're looking for here is both positive and negative reviews so the positive
reviews are going to give you an idea of the desires that they had before they engage the brand
and the negative reviews are going to give you an insight as to the fears that they had before they
engage the brand so these desires and fears are a window into the mind of your audience and this is
gold this is real gold when it comes to defining what your brand is going to do differently because
if you can tap in to those fears and to those desires with the difference that you make in the
marketplace then you're going to gain attention in that market and you're really going to turn
heads of your audience step number 14 you want to perform a swot analysis now once you've finished
your spreadsheet you will have a spreadsheet full of information and what you need to do now
is to go and analyze that information and start mapping it so start identifying the strengths
and the weaknesses of each and every one of your competitors and what you're looking for here
are gaps in the market yes the strengths of your competitors will give you ideas of
what you know your audience likes and you may be able to integrate some of that into your
your own brand but that's not going to be your differentiator your differentiator is going
to be born from the weaknesses that you see of your competitors the gaps that they've left open
and then you take those gaps you develop those gaps through creative thinking and that's when you
find a unique differentiator for your brand step number 14 you want to perform a swot analysis now
once you've finished your spreadsheet you will have a spreadsheet full of information
and what you need to do now is to go and analyze that information and start mapping it so start
identifying the strengths and the weaknesses of each and every one of your competitors and what
you're looking for here are gaps in the market yes the strengths of your competitors will give you
ideas of what you know your audience likes and you may be able to integrate some of that into
your your own brand but that's not going to be your differentiator your differentiator is going
to be born from the weaknesses that you see of your competitors the gaps that they've left open
and then you take those gaps you develop those gaps through creative thinking and that's when
you find a unique differentiator for your brand so as you can see there's a bit of leg work in the
competitive analysis and unfortunately there's no getting away from it you can't fast track this you
can't skip over but if you do follow that 14-step framework it does simplify it and it does make it
easier and if you do it effectively then you can find that goal you can find those patterns
those gaps and you can use those gaps to develop out an effective differentiation strategy for your
brand and this is where truly unique brands are born by gathering this information and using that
information to make those strategic decisions so don't skip over follow the 14-step framework do
it effectively and set your brand apart from all of those other brands and that's it i hope this
video helped if it did give it a thumbs up hit the subscribe button if you've got any questions pop
them in the box below I'll do my best to answer them all and I will see you in the next video
you