Competitor Tracking

Understanding your market environment is an essential part of strategic business planning. No matter what industry you're in, keeping a watchful eye on your competitors provides invaluable insights that help shape your business decisions.

Among the core business survival skills, maintaining a holistic picture of your competitive landscape through competitor tracking is vital.

This article will cover the rationale of competitor tracking, the areas to focus on, and how to go about it effectively.

Why Track Your Competitors?

Competitor tracking is more than just being aware of what your rival companies do. It provides:

• Informed Strategic Planning: Based on how the competitive landscape is unfolding, you can make strategic decisions about your business direction, from product development to branding.
• Market Trend Awareness: Tracking your competitors can also reveal significant trends or changes in the market or consumer behavior that may impact your business.
• Learn From Successes and Failures: By observing the outcomes of your competitors' actions, you can discover strategies that work well and learn from those that don't.
• Stay ahead: Proactively monitoring competitors allows you to anticipate their moves, providing a chance to stay ahead of the curve.

What to Track?

To utilize competitor tracking effectively, you need to focus on several areas:

Product/Service Offerings: Keep updated with your competitors’ product and service offerings. Understand how they position these, what they do differently, and look for gaps where your business can offer something unique or superior.

Pricing Strategies: How your competitors price their products/services can influence your pricing strategy. It can give you a sense of the market rate and customer's willingness to pay.

Marketing Activities: Monitor competitors' activities across all marketing channels, be it content marketing, social media, SEO, SEM, or traditional marketing. Note what seems to be working well and what isn't.

Sales Strategies: Keep an eye on your competitors' sales strategies, how they approach their sales process, the channels they use for sales, and how they handle the customer relationship.

Customer Base: Monitor your competitors' customers. Identifying their key markets reveals the demographics and needs of people attracted to similar products/services.

Financial Performance: If your competitors are publicly traded, detailed financial information can provide valuable insights.

Company News: Keep tabs on major company events such as executive changes, mergers/acquisitions, expansions, or anything substantial that could affect competitive dynamics.

Mapping Out the Competition

Understanding where your competitors position themselves within the market can help you determine your own position. One way to do this is by creating a competitor matrix. Here's a simple guide:

1. Identify the Competitors: Start by creating a list of your top competitors - those targeting a similar customer base with similar products or solutions.
2. Determine the Parameters: Choose the parameters on which you'd like to compare your competitors. This might include pricing, quality, customer service, innovation, brand perception, etc.
3. Rate each Competitor: On each parameter, rate each competitor on a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being the best.
4. Analyze the Matrix: Look for patterns or gaps in the market, where there may be an opportunity for your company to make its mark.

Taking Action

After collecting and analyzing your competitor's information, you’ll be making strategic decisions on areas like:

• Differentiation: How can you stand out?
• Positioning: Where do you fit in the market landscape?
• Pricing: Are you over or underpriced?
• Go-to-Market: How will you approach sales and marketing?

Consider using a digital solution to manage your competitor tracking process. An AI-powered platform like Aomni can help provide real-time competitive insights, as well as generate personalized sales content — in as little as 15 minutes, with no effort.

With Aomni, not only do you stay updated on your competition, but you also capitalize on this information to create content that equips your sales and marketing teams to make more strategic decisions and better compete.

Conclusion

Competitor tracking is a vital business function in today's dynamic and competitive business landscape. It equips you with much-needed perspective, insights, and data to drive strategic decisions and tactics. Leveraging tools like Aomni makes the process more efficient and effective, offering real-time insights and empowering businesses to stay ahead of their competitors. Through intentional competitor tracking, you can navigate the competitive landscape with confidence and strategically position your business for success.