When evaluating the performance of your company and creating a strategic plan, it’s imperative that you take a look at your competition. Conducting a competitor analysis puts things into perspective, allowing you to spot under-served gaps in the market, keep an eye on trends, and determine ways to differentiate yourself from your competitors.
Are you spinning your wheels when trying to conduct a competitive analysis? This type of investigation can seem daunting, but scrutinizing your competitor’s business and products is essential to stay ahead. Luckily there are numerous resources that make this demanding process more manageable; to help, we have curated some of our favorite tools and resources that will make your analysis a little less cumbersome.
1. inc.com
Understanding why competitor analysis is important is the first step to conducting a meaningful comparison. Inc.com produced a 10 part series called “How to Write a Great Business Plan” which breaks down the essentials to defining who you are as a company. Their insights on Part 7, “Competitive Analysis”, illustrate what benefits you can achieve by monitoring your competitors.
2. Template.net
Template.net is a great resource to assist in establishing a foundation for your competitive analysis. With 9+ templates to choose from, they provide guidance and will help you capture the state of your industry.
Templates act as a map, guiding you through a meaningful competitor analysis
3. Smartsheet.com
One specific type of competitive analysis is a SWOT analysis, which stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. The SWOT framework is effective in analyzing competitors and creating a simplified picture of a complex situation. Smartsheet.com details in greater depth the purpose of a SWOT analysis and offers up a variety of tools — including Excel, PowerPoint, Word and Smartsheet templates — to help guide the discussion within your organization.
4. Harvard Business Review
The SWOT model is one of the most common ways businesses compare themselves to the competition. If you like this model, the Harvard business review offers it’s own set of tools to get the most out of the analysis.
The tool provides:
- A detailed explanation of the four quadrants of a SWOT analysis with direction on how to get the most out of the discussions with your colleagues.
- Two examples of fictional companies to explain how the concepts apply to a business.
- A customizable PowerPoint template and SWOT template to curate the content that comes out of the analysis and present your findings.
High quality analysis helps ensure you stay king among the competition
5. BusinessBalls.com
Businessballs.com has a plethora of tools and resources that can be used for competitive analysis. One of those tools, the PEST analysis, is an acronym for Political, Economic, Social and Technological factors. Best uses for PEST include strategic planning, marketing planning, business and product development and research reporting. Businessballs.com also offers up insights on which tool may be best for your needs, with templates for both the SWOT and Porter’s Five Forces Competitive Position Model.
Now Perform Your Competitor Analysis!
While your competition competes for your clients, they can ultimately provide insight into how to target the right people, provide the best products and services, and communicate in a compelling and unique way. Learning which analytical tools and resources will help you keep up is vital to the health of your company. What we provided above is not an exhaustive list, but it’s a great place to start, and in the future we will provide additional tools for staying ahead of the competition. Have fun analyzing!
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