Competitive Analysis

Posted by Ronan on Oct 2, 2009 in LEAP, startup | 0 comments

Brian O’Kane from Oak Tree Press was in this week to chat to us about competitive analysis.

It was a long day and my mind was on a couple of things. Towards the latter part of the afternoon my brain was just dead and wasn’t taking much more in – thankfully the brain was alive and well for all the rest.  So here is the synopsis of what he spoke to us about.

He quoted Guy Kawasaki business model (From Art of Start) to start with

who has your money in their pocket, and how are you going to get it?

So how do you get at the spondoolicks?

I’m not advocating you go out and rob people .. no you get them to give it to you.

Here is how..

1. Understand your customer – know as much about what they do and why they are doing it.. what is painful for them?
2. Have Something people want
   1. Explain in simple words what your product is and does
   2. How it works / made
   3. Why it’s better ( use Unlike statements e.g. ‘Unlike product X, our product ….’)
   4. (I want to add) The benefit to the customer .. goes back to point 1 and solving the customers pain
3. Know who you are selling to..
   1. Lots and lots of stuff for you to consider.. like ..age/sex – but ultimately the list depends on your customer profile
4. You are not alone (if you are .. you are in trouble!)
   1. Everything is competing for your customers cash.. everything!
   2. You need compelling reasons to your customer to buy your product
5. Charge no more than what your customer is prepared to pay.
   1. This is a super hard thing to figure out. I think you’ll need to go out and pitch it and see how customers react.
   2. What features enhance the price you can charge?
6. Get Sales
   1. If you have no sales.. you have no business. End of Story.
   2. Understand how many people will buy it.. and work from there with sales projections.
      1. this goes back to the market research..

ok so .. what next ? Exactly! Time to get thinking about strategy

• Where do you want to go?
• Where are you now?
• How do you get there?

The important one is HOW

You shouldn’t be looking behind you all the time.. You need a mission and a vision to look to the future.

Our mission is to answer the  question .. “Where is that?” with “Don’t worry I’ll send you a PinPoint”

Our vision is to

Provide a single coherent technology to empower the mobile, web and personal navigation experience.

You’ll need to set Challenges!

Our challenges are tough.. we want to 99.999% reliability and accuracy, keep all our customer super happy and grow and expand the business on a global stage.

ok – so these mission/vision and challenges are dated October 2009.. I’m sure they will (inter)change over time.

An interesting topic covered was Positioning.

If you were a top CEO of a super-duper company .. what type of luxury car would you buy? A Skoda superb or a Merc ?

A Merc! of course.  You are buying the badge. .the image. You want to project a certain status so a Skoda badge will not do.

Position your product where the customer perceives your product should be.

Know what business you are in.. Rolex sells watches? No.. they sell luxury goods.

You’ll need to competitive analysis of your competition.

• Direct
• Indirect
• Out of Category

If you look at the direct competition category, break down each one and look at their strength and weaknesses

• Financial (are they well funded)
• Marketing (Are they visible?)
• Organizational (how big are they?)
• Operational (How do they customer support? etc)

Know their customer segments, their path to market and key partnerships they have in place.

- If you think about it.. these are questions you should be asking yourself, putting in a business plan and go out and achieve your targets/challenges !