I was asked today about competitor analysis in B2B markets – how do to do it and what are the challenges?
‘Interesting’ question I thought. So I polled (delegated to) the planning team and got the following response:
The first thing to say is that in marketing terms, we would never look at competitor research as a discrete activity. It is when competitor analysis is combined with real audience and category insight that we – as a communications agency – can find the positioning opportunities that create real value for brands.
So our recommended approach would always be to understand the audience and market drivers first and then work out how your brand stacks up against your competitors against each of those drivers. We tend to use qualitative research (groups / interviews) to understand the former and quantitative tracking studies to monitor the latter.
For any given campaign, our research always boils down to a Value Proposition. This is a three or four paragraph summary which articulates why ‘I’ need and why ‘I’ should buy ‘this’ particular product or service. Inherent in this is the need to explain why the offering delivers superior customer value to next best alternative. We try to find the one or two things that are most important. This is not always easy for agencies and clients to establish and requires customer value research rather than a long list of points of differentiation.
In terms of techniques for competitor research / analysis we have obviously seen a real shift to online tools and resources. We use software to track brand share of voice (positive and negative) in the ’blogospehere’ as well as in traditional / controlled channels – traditional SOV and SOV2.0! We also run tracking studies through online research panels and use shared websites to capture and share information.
One of the obvious challenges in B2B is the direct nature of much of the marketing activity. How do you get hold of the DM pack that your competitor sends to an IT Director for example? There are ways around this – it just takes a little imaginative thinking.
I guess I need to check what ‘imaginative thinking’ means and make sure our tracking activities are not crossing the boundaries into espionage!
The first thing to say is that in marketing terms, we would never look at competitor research as a discrete activity. It is when competitor analysis is combined with real audience and category insight that we – as a communications agency – can find the positioning opportunities that create real value for brands.
So our recommended approach would always be to understand the audience and market drivers first and then work out how your brand stacks up against your competitors against each of those drivers. We tend to use qualitative research (groups / interviews) to understand the former and quantitative tracking studies to monitor the latter.
For any given campaign, our research always boils down to a Value Proposition. This is a three or four paragraph summary which articulates why ‘I’ need and why ‘I’ should buy ‘this’ particular product or service. Inherent in this is the need to explain why the offering delivers superior customer value to next best alternative. We try to find the one or two things that are most important. This is not always easy for agencies and clients to establish and requires customer value research rather than a long list of points of differentiation.
In terms of techniques for competitor research / analysis we have obviously seen a real shift to online tools and resources. We use software to track brand share of voice (positive and negative) in the ’blogospehere’ as well as in traditional / controlled channels – traditional SOV and SOV2.0! We also run tracking studies through online research panels and use shared websites to capture and share information.
One of the obvious challenges in B2B is the direct nature of much of the marketing activity. How do you get hold of the DM pack that your competitor sends to an IT Director for example? There are ways around this – it just takes a little imaginative thinking.
I guess I need to check what ‘imaginative thinking’ means and make sure our tracking activities are not crossing the boundaries into espionage!
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