If you’re thinking about starting a company or you are already involved with one but want to understand your market better, you’ll want to evaluate your actual or potential competitors.
There are three components to a good competitive analysis: (1) defining the metrics and identifying the competitors you’re comparing, (2) gathering the data, and (3) the analysis.
How do you begin? What are the relevant factors that you should be comparing? And what conclusions can/should you draw from the data?
Below, I offer 10 tips (from my own experience) for evaluating your competitors. I’ll illustrate by using TechCruch and Mashable as an example. Keep in mind that this post isn’t intended to be the complete guide to competitive analysis. I wanted to share a bit of what I’ve learned and to help you build a foundation.
TechCrunch, according to its About page, is a “weblog dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies. In addition to covering new companies, we profile existing companies that are making an impact (commercial and/or cultural) on the new web space.”
Mashable, according to its About page, “is the world’s largest blog focused exclusively on Web 2.0 and Social Media news. With more than 7 million monthly pageviews, Mashable is the most prolific blog reviewing new Web sites and services, publishing breaking news on what’s new on the web and offering social media resources and guides.”
Let’s assume that you want to compare TechCrunch and Mashable. Here we go:
1. Define WHAT metrics are important. Before you start looking at data, you must understand what metrics are meaningful to your comparison. Are you interested in comparing revenues? Unique visitors? Total visits? Traffic rank? Pick a set of metrics that are important to you and measure the data based on those metrics.
Don’t worry if you’re not sure whether you’ve defined all of the relevant metrics. As you start looking at the data, you’ll no doubt see other good comparisons.
2. Look at recent trends. In the past two months, Mashable has overtaken TechCrunch in unique visitors, as reported by http://www.compete.com
Recent trends are important because they paint a picture of what’s happening now. Based on this recent data, Mashable appears to be growing at a slightly faster rate than TechCrunch. But has this been historically true – say for the past year?
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