How to Identify the Right Competitors to Study
Atlas/Maps/Demand Curve Growth MOC
- Talk to your leads and customers. Ask what other companies they’ve considered or used.
- Important note: It’s possible your leads will name companies that aren’t actually competitors. This might mean that your brand positioning or value props aren’t very clear. You may be emphasizing the wrong features, or you might be pitching to the wrong audience.
- Look through online directories like Crunchbase, Product Hunt, and G2. Search by topic/category and keep narrowing down to find both direct and indirect competitors.
- Break down your user’s workflow. Look at how your target audience handles the specific problem your product solves. (Get insight into this process from doing market and customer research.) Break this workflow into smaller tasks and different products that complete each task. Here’s an example of how that might look for someone writing an article.
- The products that appear most frequently or carry out the same tasks as yours are probably competitors.
- Google your target keywords. See what websites rank highly for your target keywords in Google’s search results. Chances are you’ll find both direct and indirect competitors, although there may also be a few companies from a completely different niche.
- For example, if your company sells a productivity app that tracks time, searching “time tracking software” shows other companies doing the same thing, like Toggl and My Hours. The results also show roundup posts listing other potential competitors.