Marketing plan

Competition analysis

Sun Tzu-those that know their enemy’s capabilities will win the battle

The purpose of marketing competition analysis is not nice to know information (nice to know is a waste of time and money). It is to understand the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors (marketing), in order to develop strategies that will attempt to put them out of business. There is a 90% probability that they do not have a written marketing plan, therefore they are probably wasting 20% of their marketing budget. The probability that they are looking into the future is only 45%, and the vast majority of those that do, will not have the capability to implement those strategies.

YOU can be twice as profitable, and put them out of business, simply by being more efficient at distributing resources than them (marketing). This is where you use that to your advantage; find their weaknesses (marketing).

1. Set up Google alerts for each of your competitors to continuously monitor your competitors, this will prevent marketing surprises by providing early warning to new products or markets competitors enter
2. List the competitors that are in each submarket from the list you did in previous steps
3. What is the Market share percentage of each competitor for each sub market (you can use sites like manta.com, hoovers.com, or if publicly traded their annual and quarterly reports and use estimations)
4. SWOT analysis of each competitor (again detailed, website, brochures, sales team), (marketing)
5. Marketing analysis of your interpretation of competitor’s objectives and strategies, unique selling points, position strategy, product/service offering, what they feature prominently, brand strategy, revenue, growth rate
6. Competitor’s financial position via Dun and Bradstreet credit ratings
7. Marketing evaluation of their Website, brochures, press releases, for keywords, messages, strengths, etc
8. Human resources- frequency and types of positions, # of employees, location of sites
9. The competitors prioritized target markets (press releases, blog post, etc.)
10. What are the marketing messages of your competitors?
11. How are your competitors selling against your company and what are their main points (marketing)
12. Who are the strategic customers of each competitor in each sub market and how long have they been customers
13. What geographic markets are they strong in (marketing?)
14. Classify competitors as first movers, those that defend positions, reactors, expanders innovators or risk takers etc. Use this information to determine counter-reactions and develop marketing strategies to thwart competitor’s efforts
15. SWOT analysis of all the competitor’s products/services versus yours (marketing)
    (buy them), reverse engineer, have it cost out using your suppliers, (find out if their suppliers are more efficient) Learn from their knowledge, (not copy, but learn) (marketing)

What year was the product launched?
What is the product lifecycle in years?, new, growth, mature, declining?
Sales of each product volume or dollar amount
what is their pricing strategy, skimming or penetration?
Do they offer discounts and promotions, financing options, Guarantees?
What are the Historical changes of all these?
What is their Distribution Strategy, Channels, Partners, Reach/market penetration
Are they able to achieve/successful, not successful at any of the above