Assessing the competitive strength of your major competitors is a crucial aspect of strategic planning in business. It allows you to understand the market landscape, identify potential threats, and devise strategies to maintain or increase your market share. Here’s a comprehensive guide on how to assess the competitive strength of your major competitors and how to attack their strengths.
6 Steps to Assess the Competitive Strength of Your Major Competitors
1. **Identify Your Competitors:** The first step in assessing the competitive strength of your competitors is identifying who they are. This can be done through market research, industry reports, customer surveys, and online tools like Google Trends or SEMrush.
2. **Analyze Their Product or Service Offering:** Once you’ve identified your competitors, analyze their product or service offerings. Look at the quality, pricing, features, customer service, and any unique selling propositions (USPs). This will give you an idea of what makes them attractive to customers and where their strengths lie.
3. **Evaluate Their Market Position:** Understanding your competitor’s market position is crucial. Look at their market share, growth rate, and customer base. Are they a market leader or a follower? Do they cater to a niche segment or a broad audience? This will help you understand their reach and influence in the market.
4. **Examine Their Marketing Strategies:** Analyze their marketing strategies – both online and offline. Look at their advertising campaigns, social media presence, SEO strategies, content marketing efforts, etc. This will give you insights into how they attract and retain customers.
5. **Assess Their Financial Strength:** If possible, assess their financial strength by looking at their annual reports or financial statements. This can give you an idea about their profitability, financial stability, investment capacity, etc.
6. **Understand Their Organizational Structure:** Understanding your competitor’s organizational structure can provide insights into their decision-making process, innovation capabilities, operational efficiency etc.
Now that we’ve discussed how to assess the competitive strength of your major competitors let’s move on to how you can attack these strengths:
6 Strategies to Attack Your Competitor’s Strength
1. **Differentiation:** One way to attack your competitor’s strength is by differentiating your product or service offering. This could be through superior quality, innovative features, better customer service or lower pricing.
2. **Targeting Niche Markets:** If your competitors are targeting a broad audience, you could focus on niche markets that they may have overlooked or underserved.
3. **Improving Marketing Strategies:** If your analysis reveals that your competitor’s marketing strategies are more effective than yours, consider improving yours by adopting best practices or coming up with innovative marketing ideas.
4. **Leveraging Technology:** Technology can be a great equalizer in today’s digital age. You could use technology to improve operational efficiency, enhance customer experience or develop innovative products/services.
5. **Strategic Partnerships/Alliances:** Forming strategic partnerships or alliances with other companies can help you gain access to new markets, technologies or resources that can enhance your competitive position.
6. **Investing in R&D:** Investing in research and development (R&D) can help you develop innovative products/services that can disrupt the market and weaken your competitor’s position.
Remember that attacking your competitor’s strengths should not be about undermining them but rather about improving your own competitive position in the market. In conclusion, assessing the competitive strength of your major competitors involves a thorough analysis of various aspects like product/service offering, market position, marketing strategies etc., while attacking these strengths involves differentiation, targeting niche markets etc., with the ultimate goal of enhancing your own competitive position in the market.
