Competitor Research Part two

Heeey there,

Do you know why most competitor research is worthless?

Because it only focuses on the most obvious market players and on some easy-to-find, surface-level components.

Last week we covered 2 parts of our 4 part competitor research guide.

• Understanding your competition’s growth model » Part 1

• How to select the right competition for research » Part 2

Plus a tutorial on getting free insights from your competitors

If you’ve missed out & would love to score some low-hanging fruit in your messaging, check out this summary on the scrape&break method.

I’ve also provided free templates for competitor analysis, if you are interested & missed out just stick around til the end.

I’m giving these👇 out for free.💃

This time we’ll summarise Part 3 [The Product & The Model] and next week we’ll be looking at Part 4 [The Channel].

[or check this out if you are interested in a longer form blog post]👇

Topic Overview:

• How to research the product and pricing of your competitors 🕵️‍♂️
  [The Model and The Product]

But 1st a quick recap of The Market
[feel free to skip this if you remember last week’s mail, just scroll until Part 3👇]

Part 1: The growth model of your competition 👩‍🔬

On a high level, there are 4 models a business needs to fit in order to grow.

The 4-model fit was developed by Brian Balfour [Founder/CEO of Reforge, previously VP of Growth @ HubSpot].

1. The Market: What market segments and customers are they going after?

2. The Product: What product or service are they selling towards those segments? [How are they communicating the value towards the market?]

3. The Model: How are their customers paying them? [& How much?]

4. The Channel: How are they attracting those customers?

credits: Brian Balfour

Part 2 How to select your competitors for your research 🕵️‍♂️

The Market:

If you don’t segment your market and Ideal Customer Profile before you start running your analysis, you will burn through your resources.

You’ll end with a list of companies that might not even be relevant to research.

Or you won’t understand what you need to document when creating your research.

In order to run a competitor analysis, your company needs to align around 3 things.

The 3 foundations of competitor research

1. Market Segments & Customer Profile (Who)
Which market segment are you going after and who are you targeting within those segments?

Competitor Research by Ricardo Ghekiere

You can think of a few segments, each segment will buy your product for different reasons.

This is why the first step in creating any B2B campaign starts with proper segmentation and creating an Ideal Customer Profile.

2. Problems faced (What)
Once you know the segment of customers you are going after, it’s time to understand their problems.

The same exact solution could target different niches and solve different problems.

This is the power of segmentation.

With a clear segmentation, your team can better understand which segments it really cares about and who you are competing with to solve the same problem.

Here is an example of a segment I focus on and the most common problems they face.

Make sure to use the templates provided in the LinkedIn Content Marketing Ebook, to deep-dive into each segment.

3. Solution (How)
How are you solving the problems you have defined by talking to your Ideal Customer Profile?

Based on these answers you are now able to segment your competitors into 4 categories

The who, what and how of competitor research provides the basis for the 4 competitor segments 👇

1. Direct Competitors
Same customer, same problem, same solution.

2. Different problem competitors
Same customer, same solution, different problem.

3. Different customer competitors
Same solution, same problem, different customer.

4. Different product category competitors
Same problem, same customer, different product.
Here is how this would look like if we would take Uber as an example.

Competitor Research by Ricardo Ghekiere

Lyft = A direct competitor of Uber that solves the exact same problem sells to the same customer and offers the same solution.
Doordash = Food delivery at home from your favourite restaurants. They sell to the same customer
Zum = One-stop partner for student transportation.

At 1st focus on your direct competitors to understand who you are competing with & how they are growing their business.

Keep in mind that the most dangerous competitors are those that sell to the same target customer.

It’s a lot easier to provide extra services or products to an existing customer base compared to selling to a different segment.

The investment to go after a new segment never comes cheap.

Got your 3-5 direct competitors?
Time to deep-dive and find hidden growth opportunities.
Why would you reinvent the wheel, if all you have to do is make it better?

Recap over, let’s move on to Part 3.

Part 3 The Product and Pricing: How to research the model and product of your competitors 🕵️‍♂️

When you conduct your competitive analysis, it's good to understand how they are growing their business based on their business model.

Why?

Because the way they grow their company (and pick distribution channels) will always be different depending on 2 factors:

1. Price

2. Complexity

Instead of getting into that check out this visual summary, we’ve created.

Moving on 👇

What are the barriers to entry in your target market? 🔐

Barriers to entry are factors that prevent a newcomer from entering a particular market.

It's your job to discover which barriers are put into place by your competitors in order to move into a segment you’re targeting.

For SaaS companies, there are 3 types of competitive advantages observed by Tom Tunguz:

1. Network effects: exist in enterprise social networks. A great example here is LinkedIn. The more users it gets, the harder it is for others to enter the market.

2. Data network effects: exist when the value of additional data is compounded with time. For example, most CRMs get more valuable as they are loaded with data, which makes it harder to swap solutions (also called switching costs).

3. Ecosystem creation: when a SaaS business surrounds itself with successful partners who serve a variety of customers, not addressed by the SaaS company itself, and they reinforce the value of the SaaS product, it employs an ecosystem defence. An example is the ecosystem Salesforce has created for its CRM with partners.

Does your competitor have a:

• Network Effect Competitive Advantage?

• Data Network Effect Competitive Advantage?

• Ecosystem Creation Competitive Advantage?

What is the pricing of your competitors?

• What is the minimum price your competitor charges? and what are the pricing packages or bundles?

• What are the main factors that impact price (number of seats, volume etc.)?

• Do some of the packages belong to different models as discussed above?

What are the Product strengths/weaknesses?

• What are the strengths of your competitor’s product?

• What are the weaknesses of your competitor’s product?

• How do they communicate the value of the product?

What are the reviews of the product?

Crafting your USP (Unique Selling Proposition) starts with a deep understanding of what your competitors are doing, what they are missing and how you can use this angle to outcompete them.

This is why gathering reviews from your competitors is key to crafting your USP.

This we covered last week and I’ve mentioned on the top 👆
» If you’ve missed out on it 👉 check out this summary on the scrape&break method.

With this information, you should know:

1. be able to craft your marketing message

2. find unique angles to acquire new customers

3. see if there are any features worth implementing

Here is an example of Albacross.

Leadfeeder is an alternative to Albacross. The main difference between the software is the way they identify companies visiting your website.

• Leadfeeder uses Google Analytics Data to identify companies

• Albacross uses a custom-written script you add to your website

The biggest advantage of using a custom script is that Albacross is able to identify more companies & more stakeholders compared to its biggest competitor.

And since every missed lead is a missed opportunity, it’s a unique angle they are able to play within their competitor campaigns as you can see on a snapshot of their landing page below.

If you want, you can take it even a step further and identify opportunities on the feature level.

Here is a complaint about Leadfeeder showing data from a lead that visited their website a week ago 👇

Connecting with Google Analytics has one big flaw for Leadfeeder.

Data isn’t synced in real-time.

This means that somebody visiting a potential lead on your website right now isn’t shown immediately, something a custom script by Albacross is able to do.

In a matter of seconds, you have found yourself another angle to play with compared to your competitors by spying on their reviews. 💃

The competitor template we use for research 💾

One of the most straightforward templates we use when it comes to competitor research is this one.

LinkedIn posts worth reading this week:


1. 5 Ways To Boost Your Linkedin Presence

A 3-minute crash course to up your LinkedIn profile optimisation skills.

2. How To Create a High-Converting Lead Magnet

A 34-page step-by-step tutorial from Alisha Conlin-Hurd, with 3 proven client examples.

3. How To Outline Blog Posts

Readers expect a beginning, a middle part and an ending to your story. Learn how to build a structure in 8 steps.