This template helps you break down and analyze your competition across three distinct levels of business operations: Market, Product & Corporate. Use our weighted scoring approach to rank the relative importance of each of these levels from a customer’s perspective so you can better understand the different levels of competition around you.
Whether you are looking for new markets to tap into, new products to develop, or new ways to create value for your customers, it’s impossible to plan for success without keeping an eye out for who you’re up against.
What you need in today’s hyper-competitive marketscape is a pre-made framework to help you break down and analyze your competition across different levels of business operations. This detailed and systematically done comparison of the most critical factors affecting each player’s competitiveness will give you a holistic view of your position in the market compared to others and what you need to do to level up.
Luckily for you, this template provides a weighted scoring approach to understand your competition at three distinct levels: product, market, and corporate. We let you rank the relative importance of each of these levels from the customer’s perspective, helping you figure out the different levels of competition around you.
Our template is customizable (so you can use any set of individual factors under each of these three thematic areas as per your business needs and context). It is also fully scalable, so you can add as many individual competitors & analytical factors or categories as you like.
Now, let’s explore our template in a little more detail:
How Our Template Works
Our template facilitates a detailed analysis of critical factors affecting competitiveness in three areas:
- Product Analysis
- Market Analysis
- Corporate Analysis
Once you identify relevant individual factors in light of your unique market needs, type of clientele, and industry context, it’s time to measure how each competitor ranks compared to others. First up, assign a percentage weight to each factor in light of how critical it is for your overall business goals. In particular, look at how closely each factor is aligned with your company’s overall strategic objectives.
Your next step is to rate each company from 1 to 5 for each factor based on relevant data, such as social media analytics, annual company reports, industry-level stats, and customer reviews. A weighted score is then calculated by multiplying the weightage (%) by the rating against each factor for each competitor. Our template then automatically adds all these figures together to yield a final score. The company with the highest score will be the one with the most competitive offering in the market.
In the following sections, we help you build a sense of what kind of factors you want to bear in mind at each level of analysis:
Product Analysis
This section delves into an in-depth analysis of how your product stacks up against your competitors’.
Imagine you are selling office management software in a fiercely competitive tech market driven by the need for constant innovation. How do you stay ahead of rival firms that are targeting the same customers as you, i.e., offices?
For starters, you need a detailed comparative study of product features, such as price, usability, or functionality, or branding elements, such as style & design. By comparing the most salient features (which will vary from product to product or industry to industry), you can see what really sets everyone apart and where your product fits in the market.
Where should I look for product info?
One of the best places to look for reliable insights into what’s so great (or not) about a product is, well – the product itself. In other words, you’ll need to conduct primary research about the product that comes directly from the customers (or users) themselves. Analyze customer reviews, client testimonials, app ratings & usability feedback to find out what users have to say about the quality of a similar product offered by your competitors.
Alternatively, and we certainly recommend this, you should test-run the product yourself. Auditing the product first-hand, say, by signing up for a free trial or trying out a sample at the supermarket – you can put yourself in the customer’s shoes and study the complete packaging, usage, and delivery experience as they would.
Here’s a non-exhaustive list of features you might find useful to compare and co-analyse:
- Usability or quality of user experience
- Core product features or functionalities
- Feature depth
- Style & design
- Product quality and range
- Use of new, enabling technologies
- Pricing structure
- Type and number of warranties
- Value generated for customers
- Post-sale Service
- Level of customer support offered
- Availability of stock
Market Analysis
A market analysis is the cornerstone of a viable business strategy. For this part, you will need to conduct an in-depth analysis of different market metrics that distinguish your offerings from those of your competitors.
In other words, this is your chance to survey the overall market landscape and position competitors based on their relative strengths and weaknesses. Not surprisingly, it is common for product developers and business managers to run a SWOT analysis at this stage to analyze the internal and external factors affecting the success of each product or initiative launched by each competitor.
This exercise (when done correctly) offers critical insight into how competitive the market is and how well-positioned your business is compared to others in the same industry. Tailoring your analysis to focus on the most relevant factors for your industry will yield more actionable insights able to better guide you in your future product and business development journey.
In our spreadsheet, we used some of the most commonly used analytical categories such as product range, market share, and brand reputation; however, you can easily customize these to add any categories better suited to your business context or industry type.
Here are other common factors or criteria you can use to enrich your market analysis:
- Growth Potential
- Target Audience and Demographics
- Range of Competitor Products and Services
- Market Positioning
- Revenue & Profit Margins
- Marketing & Advertising Strategies
- Sales Strategies & Distribution Channels
- Sustainability & Environmental Impact
- Level of Regulatory Compliance
Corporate
Here, you want to evaluate the corporate-level strengths and weaknesses of your competitors (and of course, yourself). The basic idea here is to learn from the organizational make-up and business models of different competitors who find themselves vying for the attention of the same target customers.
In our template, we used the following default categories:
- Financial Resources
- Research & Development
- Manufacturing
- Technology
- Geographical Coverage
But you can replace or add to these categories to suit the specifics of your business or industry. While some industries (such as the tech industry) tend to place a greater premium on Research & Development or Innovation; for others, such as a shipping service, you should emphasize more on factors like geographical coverage.
All in all, a corporate-level analysis will not only help you manage risks by early identifying potential threats from competitors, but it will also allow you to benchmark your company’s performance against its toughest competitors and identify areas for improvement.
Who Is Our Template For?
- Business strategists and analysts: For detailed competitor evaluations.
- Product managers: To refine product development strategies.
- Corporate planners: To align business resources and capabilities with market needs.
- Entrepreneurs: To assess competition for new ventures.
- Marketing teams: To refine messaging and highlight unique selling points.
- Entrepreneurs: To assess market fit for new products.
- Corporate planners: To align business resources and capabilities with market needs.
Why Do I Need One?
- For identifying strengths and weaknesses at the product, market, and corporate levels.
- To understand gaps in product features, market reach, or organizational capabilities.
- For prioritizing investments and improvements to enhance competitiveness.
- To devise strategies that help you outperform competitors.
Wrap Up
Before you start using this template, remember this: There is no one-size-fits-all competitive analysis. You can conduct one for your business as a whole, for specific products and offerings, for specific marketing channels, and more.
Our free and editable template can be downloaded directly as an Excel file or accessed via Google Sheets for cloud-based sharing, editing, and collaboration. Because this template has advanced functionalities programmed into it, make sure you macro-enable the file after downloading it so you can fully benefit from these functionalities.
