Struggling to keep up with your competitors? Competitive analysis can be a great way to turn that around. It allows you to learn from your competitors, anticipate their moves and benefit from them. By applying a scientific method to that process, the learnings you will get will be more structured, relevant and integrated, thus allowing well-founded A/B tests and ultimately strategic corporate decisions to be based on them. In this presentation you'll learn about a comprehensive framework for gathering such competitive intelligence using a scientific method.
Welcome! Presentation about CA. Based on small sample level should be X. Does that seem correct? Let’s get started!
Quote, excellent book, also on modern warfare (business). Not only know yourself, but also knowing everything about enemy (= competitor) is required to win.
Did you notice that markets are changing faster than ever?
For example, just take a look at the car industry in recent years:
Maturing competitors: with Tesla there’s no longer just competitors running on gas.
Informed customers: exploring options and add-ons before contacting you
Quick judgment: Detroit industry was slow to react to Asian cheap car producing.
[AUDIENCE] Who recognizes one or more of the above?
How to cope with such changing market changes?
Day 2 of conference on CRO, suppose y’all heard about A/B testing by now
Unfortunately, almost all ‘testing ideas gathering techniques’ are focussed on own website. Following slides explain why such a focus can be troublesome
Therefore, even if you’re testing all the things (from local research) many opportunities missed or discovered (too) late, remember Detroit?
Only local maximum can be reached, explain concept. Top of mountain is best possible outcome after given choices.
And competitive landscape looks like this, umbrella corporations that normal people rarely see
Solution: not only look at your own organization, but also outward at your competitors (= competitive analysis). This leads to the following:
Structured, strategic, CI Removes blind spots (= autonomous cars, electric cars, cars as a service, etc.)
Structured, strategic, allows you to reach global maximum. “Not just fastest horses, but cars” — henry ford
Structured, strategic, CI further shows the competitive landscape through your customer’s eyes. Who are you competing against? What’s their offer?
Meaning that taking one-off actions without a bigger, structured plan in mind, will likely lead to failure
Unfortunately, that is still how most people do CI (if they’re doing it at all). Illustrated with ad-hoc user testing example
1. Manager asks for data on a competitor ‘because he feels he needs it’
2. Some data is gathered, unstructured and without a clear objective. Feels like running around like a headless chicken
3. Data is saved unstructured, and reported, only to be put in a drawer most likely
However, competitive landscape has changed rapidly. Remember changes to car industry we’ve discussed? Try adding million channels and data points.
Therefore, we need our CI to have the following aspects, which will be explained in the next slides
Introduce Rival IQ (no affiliation). Great because it automatically collects, groups, evaluates and alerts (‘hands-off’). (> $199/month). Other tools similar available.
On top of hands-off: Deeper insights if you want to go hands-on. Dashboard shows some of the options to examine
For example, most engaging tweets in landscape of your and specified competitors
Or alerts containing changes to the website, signaling potential strategic repositioning
Separate mention for UX, as it should be handled separately as well
Screenshot of example video, showing features like Annotations and Clips to structure the findings
Loading speed is a huge aspect of UX, therefore separate mention. Company that I hadn’t heard of before
Not only let’s you compare your performance to your competitors
But also gives incredibly detailed information on how to improve your performance / website + FREE (freemium)
Explain relevance of making a cycle and doing each step every time: Consistency, allows for process optimization, no steps forgotten, less errors
First step: determine needs, establish requirements, develop a plan for this analysis
Gather ALL relevant data, for instance: running campaigns or A/B tests, upcoming holidays, dev releases. E.g. anything affecting next CI cycle
Run the user tests as planned, taking into account the collected relevant data. Also, start broad strokes grouping of findings
Analyse the data based on the objectives that were set during planning. Is the page performing as planned? Does the test answers the questions that were posed?
Sharing the insights with the customer/client/manager that requested it. If presented, try to use standardized presentations for efficiency.
Gathering feedback and assessing whether the process satisfied the client's needs and ongoing needs. Consider restarting phase again.
See how you do relative to competitors (and relative to yourself). This provides context for the changes, and allows you to see patterns more easily
Show (automatic) benchmarking via Rival IQ.
Enter this data into Excel for long-term benchmarks?
Explain benchmarking for UX: let users do tasks, and rate them on numerical scales. Does require high volume of user testers to get reliable results
Visually can look like this. Could also be segmented per competitor instead.
Connected to (strategic) decisions, how to exploit weaknesses, how to anticipate their moves and beat them to the punch. 4 specific examples follow:
Finding: What influencers are mentioning a competitor (and not you)?
Action: Try connecting to them and get them to promote you as well
Finding: What high-value SEO/SEA keywords aren’t you targeting (properly)? Action: Create and promote content related to those keywords.
Finding: What content and/or promotion is performing well for them?
Action: Use it as inspiration for your own content marketing efforts
Finding: Who is mentioning, but hasn’t provided a link to your website?
Action: Approach them and ask for a link.
Again the user testing, this time handled via the model
Large checklist of items to consider for each step is available for download.
o Decide upon: number of test subjects, deadline, which competitors, etc.
o Coordinate with other teams about responsibility, segments, devices, etc.
o Collect relevant data from other (SEA, SEO, etc.) and previous tests
o What psychological drives and systems motivate visitors to take actions?
o Gather feedback from team members, improve test setup when required
o Run the tests, and make highly structured notes of the results
o View the benchmarks, see if these where positive changes?
o Compare the results to other competitors, what can we learn?
o Save all findings in a structured way; including raw source video
o Update relevant benchmarks and documents
o Discuss findings and process with team members
o See how these new findings affect the current strategy
Conclusion. Learn about competitors, anticipate moves, always be one step ahead. Plan your strategy; structured, relevant, integrated. Base for strategic decisions.