Executive Summary: This article explores two foundational competitive analysis frameworks, Side-By-Side Basic Grounding and SWOT Analysis. These frameworks centralize information and help teams unify around common goals for competitive dominance.
Do You Know the 2 Tried-and-True Methods for Improving Your Competitive Position?
A competitor analysis framework provides a structured way to go about researching and understanding the competitive landscape. For any brand, knowing who the competition is and what they are doing is important. It’s a general good practice to tease out opportunities and stay ahead.
When Should I Create a Competitor Analysis Framework?
There are several scenarios that might trigger the need for a competitive analysis due-diligence project including:
- Understanding performance on key metrics relative to competitors, e.g., market share, growth, pricing, distribution, marketing spend, etc.
- Identifying portfolio gaps or new product/white space opportunities
- Identifying opportunities to drive greater differentiation and improve profitability
- General strategic planning best practice
What Do I Need to Know About My Competitors?
A competitive analysis should always be structured around the question you are trying to answer or decision it will drive. After all, there is an infinite amount of information you can spend time gathering about competitors. You need to be focused on the target information that will be helpful in achieving your end objective.
What Are the Top Competitor Analysis Frameworks?
I’ll cover two competitor analysis frameworks I often use when starting a competitive analysis project:
- Side-By-Side Basic Grounding
- SWOT Analysis
Competitor Analysis Framework: Side-By-Side Basic Grounding
When it comes to competitive strategy, your team needs to agree to a unified approach. If everyone is working towards the same goal, with the same information, you’ll be more successful than if opinions are fractured.
Completing a side-by-side basic grounding analysis focuses your team on important basics. These five components should be part of any competitor analysis project:
- Category overview: Define the category you’re competing in. You’ll also want to estimate the category size. This step helpsground your audience on the scope and parameters of the analysis
- Estimated revenue of key competitors: Know the size of your competitors relative to your own revenue, both overall and in this category
- Growth factors for key competitors: A competitor that is growing vs. shrinking in this category will require different approaches
- Positioning of key competitors in the marketplace: Include how key competitors talk about the category, emotional/functional benefits highlighted and relative price points. This is helpful to level set on why the competitors are relevant and to define the space they play in versus your brand
- Consumer profile of key competitors: Who are they targeting or reaching? For this, you can leverage available data or look at their website/social to see who they are targeting. This is helpful in identifying close-in competitors – those targeting similar segments as your brand versus those targeting completely different groups of consumers
How to Structure Side-By-Side Basic Grounding Analysis
A simple table like the one below is the best way to organize your information. It’s easy to read and compare.
Key Competitors in CATEGORY X
| My Brand | Competitor A | Competitor B | |
| Estimated Revenue | |||
| Growth Factors | |||
| Positioning | |||
| Consumer Profile |
What Are the Benefits of Side-By-Side Basic Grounding?
After establishing this basic grounding, everyone will share the same foundational knowledge of who the key competitors are and why they matter within the category.
It then becomes easier to dive deeper into detailed analysis of factors such as:
- Specific key metrics
- Products offered
- Customer segmentations
- Un-met opportunities
- Investment details
SWOT Competitor Analysis Framework
SWOT is a competitor analysis framework commonly used to summarize strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats versus competition. This is a great, classic framework that takes into account both internal and external factors impacting a business.
SWOT analyses can also be completed for each of your key competitors, to compare and contrast with your brand.
The SWOT analysis is often visualized in a 2×2 matrix as illustrated below:
What’s the Breakdown on SWOT Analysis?
These two quadrants of the SWOT analysis concern internal elements that your brand has control over and that you can change:
Strengths: What does your brand/company do well? What unique resources or advantages do you have versus the competition?
- Examples: Strong brand loyalty, strong balance sheet, patented technology, etc.
Weaknesses: What does your brand/company not do well? What needs improvement?
- Examples: Low brand loyalty, high debt, product performance issues, etc.
The other two quadrants represent outside forces that are true of the world-at-large. You can’t change them, but they impact your brand:
Opportunities: What trends/opportunities could you take advantage of?
- Examples: Growth in eCommerce, Generational behavior changes, Favorable government policies, etc.
Threats: What threats could harm you? What is your competition doing that could negatively impact you?
- Examples: Rising cost in materials, increased competition, tariffs, etc.
What Are the Benefits of SWOT Analysis?
SWOT is a helpful competitive analysis framework that brings it all together – summarizing what are the opportunities and potential pitfalls, while taking into account competition and other external factors.
Its open-ended approach welcomes input of all kinds, from financial data to market realities to intangible factors. And its visual nature allows you to rank your competitive position at-a-glance– if your Weaknesses significantly outweigh your Strengths, you know you have a lot work to do.
Recently, the Insight to Action consulting team saw firsthand the benefits of SWOT analysis for a packaged foods client. It helped us drive collaboration and create a common platform for a three-to-five-year strategy.
What’s the Bottom Line?
Both competitor analysis frameworks provide a structured way to approach and share competitive research findings. They are easy for anyone in your organization to understand and will prompt valuable conversations to improve your competitive positioning.
For more competitive analysis frameworks, visit Insight to Action’s competitive analysis resource page or sign up for our newsletter.
