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Are You Competitive? Survey Says: Marketers Lack Resources, Time to Conduct Research |
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One of the most important determinants of product success is the degree to which your product is different or better than your competitors’ products. It’s easy to come up with a long list of questions to ask, such as:
* Who are our competitors?
* Which products do we compete with?
* How do we go about comparing our products with our competitors’ products?
* What are the strengths and weaknesses of our competitors’ products?
* Are they making money?
* What share of the market do they have?
The challenge, however, is ensuring that you have the time, budget, and other resources needed to actually gather the data that provides real answers.
Recently, Sequent Learning posted an online survey regarding the state of competitive analysis within companies. During the four month period, over 200 people responded to the survey, with respondents coming from the following industries: Industrial and manufacturing—47%; Service-based—18%; Consumer products—14%; Technology—12%; Medical products/healthcare—9%.
WHAT WE LEARNED
Simply put, the data overwhelmingly showed that many product managers today are going about their jobs with blindfolds on.
It’s not that product managers don’t agree that product level competitive analysis is important, it’s that many of you lack the resources, time, and even knowledge on how to go about obtaining this information.
We asked survey participants if their companies had a standardized competitor profile document or template available so that everyone carrying out competitive research could be guided to find similar competitor characteristics. Only 41% said yes—with the majority, 59% - replaying in the negative. A whopping 94%, however, stated that it would be helpful if they did have such a template or guide.
We also asked survey takers what they would like to know with regard to their competitors. Responses included:
* Marketing strategies
* Competitor pricing
* Competitor terms and conditions (in sales contracts)
* Market share
* R&D investment
Although most people thought that these five items most important, 44% stated that they simply do not have the time to do this type of competitive analysis, 24% said that they don’t have the human resources to do the work, and 23% stated that the people assigned to these tasks were ineffective or that other barriers existed.
WHAT PRODUCT MANAGERS CAN DO TO HELP THEMSELVES
We understand that everyone is busy and that the resources needed to do your job effectively are in short supply.
When faced with these challenges, however, it behooves product managers and marketers to develop strategies to get vital CI data in order to figure out how to beat the competition. To this end, we recommend that you consider adopting a few of the strategies below to make progress in becoming more competitive:
1. Creat a profile for each competitor.
2. Pick apart each competitor’s product feature by feature. Work on one product a quarter. In a year, you’ll have four. Get team members involved so that everyone knows what you’re up against.
3. Write a positioning statement for each competitor’s product and then compare it to your own.
4. Take pictures of your competitors’ products. Put them side by side with your products. How does your design or layout stack up?
5. Review each competitor’s website once a month to catch any updates or changes. Be sure to check out their press room for new Webinars, podcasts, and other marketing collateral.
6. At your monthly product meeting with your team, ask each person to be prepared to talk about somrelated to the competition. You’ll be surprised at how this gets all team members talking about your competitors—and about possible changes to your competitive strategy.
To make time for these activities, block off time once or twice a month in your calendar and then keep the date with yourself. You can also ask your cross-functional team for help: those in Marcom, for example, can be enlisted to research and compare your competitors’ positioning statements and/or review competitors’ websites for any changes or news updates.
You can get the full analysis of our Competitive Analysis Benchmark Report under “Articles.” You can also view our white paper, “No Time for Market Research?” which gives solid tips for how to read more in less time.
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