Maximize Opportunities: Analyzing Competitors for Profitable Growth
READ THIS TO HELP YOUR BUSINESS MAKE MORE MONEY AND SURVIVE
1. To understand what to do first to grow your business
2. To understand why great strategy cascades from market analysis and the secret to success is NOT by spending more money on social media and google ads
3. To understand how your competitors compete against you and how you can mitigate what they are doing
4. To understand how the efficiency and effectiveness of your communications are dependent upon your understanding who you are targeting and what messages resonate
5. The secret to success is not more advertising spend, not a funnel based upon AB testing of a broken journey (because you targeted the wrong people first (the agency model is dead) but on good old fashioned strategic marketing seamlessly linked into the continual optimization of strategy, comms, and sales
READ ABOUT HOW OUR ALTERNATIVE 5XR APPROACH SUCCEEDED BELOW
Using this method, we took a solvents business and took the top 100 potential customers in the sector in 3 months, we took 4 of the top 5 oil traders in 3 months, and we took Barclays Pension business that had been static for years and grew it 120% and then 170% over 2 years. More recently we took a jewellery business in an intensely competitive and fragmented market and grew its revenues over 10x over a 2-year period, and this year we want a 7X increase. This works!
LET’S DIVE RIGHT IN!
BECAUSE THE WORLD IS CHANGING FASTER THAN WE’VE EVER KNOWN.
SOME HISTORY
As a graduate recruit in the chemical industry in the 80s and 90s, many of our manufacturing plants were nearly a hundred of years older than the competition, but we were number 1.
I learned 4 things contributed to our success:
i) Great strategy cascades from market analysis
ii) Analysis of your competitors’ propositions is the keystone to success because Competitor analysis is fundamental to strategy development.
iii) If you analyse who are doing well and why, then you can identify the most attractive market spaces and the required propositions for success.
iv) A following strategy is often the most efficient and effective strategy for success. I explained this to numerous people in some big FTSE 100 Companies I worked for, and they just didn’t get it!
We knew every competitor, their capacity of their plants, their key accounts, the quality of their products, and when their annual shutdowns took place. Most importantly we knew where they were going, how they competed, what their customers thought of them, and how we could mitigate what they were doing.
On one occasion we decided to re-enter a particular market and took back the competitors’ top 100 accounts in 3 months. The secret was understanding the customer needs better, then building a superior proposition than our competitors, and then communicating based on what was important to customers.
Competitor analysis shows you which competitors are winning and why. Map their performance against the most important components of their proposition, focusing on those components that you believe are most important to customers. Contact me for further assistance.
DIFFERENT SECTOR BUT SAME RESULTS
Later as a Director of Market and Competitor analysis at one of the largest finance companies. I carried out a similar exercise. We determined competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, analysed their mission, strategies, and proposition. My live data base tracked their activity in real time. I knew the distance from their nearest office to any account and at what price point they would pitch. I had 5 years a of financials and other published data and benchmarked every important metric.
We then developed Sales aids to help our employees compete, based upon our strengths. The communication plan was tailored to the needs of our clients. The result was fastest growth in the industry, growing revenues 2.2 X and 2.7X over 2 years in a sector that had been static for many
ONE OF THE GREATEST VALUES OF COMPETITOR ANALYSIS IS IN IDENTIFYING THE MOST ATTRACTIVE MARKET SPACES.
MARKET ANALYSIS FIRST
2 years ago, we analysed the fragmented jewellery market for a new client and identified one of the most attractive market spaces by reviewing who was winning and why.
THEN TAILORED STRATEGY
We then identified the most important factors to potential consumers, and built a winning proposition.
THEN STANDOUT COMMUNICATIONS.
We were consequently longlisted for website of the year on one of the largest interiors platforms in the world, increasing revenues over 3X for each of the last 2 years. Too many companies encouraged by agencies start with communications with little thought for which sectors are growing and which clients are best for their business, now and in the future. In marketing speak, we go where the puck is going!
CHECKLIST FOR REVIEWNG COMPETITORS:
• Who are they
• Size, growth and recent successes
• Financials
• Where are they going
• Mission statements
• Sales activities and sales collateral
• How do they compete against you
• How does their proposition stack up against yours
o Pricing strategy
o Distribution strategy
o Promotional strategy,
o Environmental and sustainability strategy
• How can you mitigate how they sell and promote
• What are their strengths and weaknesses (internal)
• What are their Opportunities and threats (external)
Only when you have analysed all your major existing and potential competitors can you really understand your own strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
In summary
Understanding competitors and how they compete is fundamental to developing your roadmap to success for your business.
If you take away nothing else from this read, create a great winning strategy from continual analysis of customer needs, market dynamics including uncontrollable factors and competitors. Then create a tailored proposition for your potential customers and build awareness with standout communications. Competitors then create tailored standout communications.
Then iterate and repeat continuously to accelerate your growth.
All feedback is gratefully received.
Did I miss anything?
AUTHOR: John Macleod
john.macleod@5xr.co.uk
+44 7501 79 3679
BIO: John Macleod is an X winner of the Dassault 7-week FinTech challenge (Nov’16) and won the Fed Reserve’s Faster Payments Task Force Top Technology Award (Dec’17) against 200 other competitors.
He’s an X director of the largest stockbroker in the UK, and Head of Pensions and Head of Broker sales at Barclays where he increased sales by triple digits for 2 consecutive years. Now Director of Strategy at Carolin Stone Jewellery where sales increased 10X over the last 2 years, and a founding director of 5XR.
