Who are my competitors? Get to know them and identify them

As a good business leader, you know how important it is to understand your competitor’s next moves and strategies. But are you sure you’re looking at the right companies?

You might be wasting a lot of time observing the wrong kinds of brands, while the right competitors get ahead of you. So how will you identify your real competitors? Don’t worry, we are here to help you out. Here’s a guide on how to identify your competitors correctly.

Types of competitors

1. Direct

Direct competitors are brands that are pretty easy to identify because they sell products or services that are similar to what you sell.

As a result, their strategies and prices may also be quite similar to yours. For example, if your brand sells orange juice to kids, you might have a competitor in the market that also sells orange juice to kids. Their price could be similar, or slightly higher or lower.

In case there is a third brand that sells orange juice at a higher price, it will also be considered as your direct competitor since all of you fall under the same category. In this kind of competition, it’s always best to understand who the leader is, as well as the followers. It is also important to track what they are doing to promote their product, such as pricing, distribution, and communication.

2. Indirect

The second type are your indirect competitors. Now, one thing to be careful about while conducting competitor analysis or competitor research is that you aren’t just competing with brands that sell the same products as yours.

So how to identify these competitors? Let’s take the orange juice example again. When do people mostly drink orange juice? During breakfast. What is something else people like to drink during breakfast? Coffee.

So if people start drinking coffee more than orange juice for breakfast, coffee companies win at that opportunity of consumption, and they also become your competitors but in an indirect manner. 

Indirect competitors are the ones that cover the same necessity that you do, but differently. This can also talk about products that have nothing to do with what you sell but represent the same budget.

For example, a cruise ship and a master’s degree are competitors since they both cost a lot of money, so a person would have to choose one over the other. Whenever there is a choice between you and another brand or product, we’re talking about competition.

Potential competitors

The two types above discussed brands that have already been launched in the market. But what about brands that are yet to launch? They should also be taken into account, right?

These are potential competitors and you should keep an eye out for those as well. For this, you need to keep track of companies that could match your product or make even better ones.

Secondly, you should analyze your products to check what you can improve to make your brand stand out even if there are new competitors.

Positioning strategies

One more analysis that you have to keep in mind is positioning strategies. There are four types of players you need to identify, which are-

1. The leader

This is the brand that has the highest share in the market. To keep their spot protected, they constantly keep coming up with new ideas regarding communication and distribution.

2. The challenger

The brands that try to compete for the number one spot so they try to challenge the leader all the time. They do this either by replicating the strategies adopted by the leader or by monitoring the leader’s moves. This involves a high-risk strategy.

3. The followers

These are brands that learn from the leader but don’t attack it. They optimize the costs and replicate them but with fewer amounts of investment.

4. Niches

Niche competitors try to attain unattended targets with specific products. Most of the time, you might be trying to track the leader’s moves without realizing that your niche competitors have also climbed up the ladder. These brands end up with higher consumer trust because they feel that those products are made for them. So it’s equally important to keep an eye on niches and see what they’re doing.

Identifying the competitor companies

Now that you have an idea about the different competitor companies, it’s time for you to go get them!

Go to the place where you sell your products and see which brands are next to yours. This can mean a supermarket, a mall, a fair- absolutely any place, including online businesses.

Search for your product category online. This could mean a search on Google to check what kind of brand websites show up. You may even search for related keywords. Following the orange juice example, you can search for keywords like “What to have for breakfast” and “Summer drinks”.

Explore as much social media as you can. This will help you to find out which brands people are talking about.

Go through forums. Contrary to popular belief, forums are not dead! Go through different conversations to see which brands have attracted people.

Tracking these competitor websites can be very time-consuming manually. But with Stillio, you can easily automate and track all your data! Stillio’s special competitor tracking features will help you to monitor brands with the help of website screenshots. Stillio allows you to add the frequency of archiving a page, take full-length website screenshots, and do so much more!

Next steps

Now that you’ve become a competitor-identifying expert, you can move on to competitor analyses easily. Check out Stillio’s blog on quick competitor analysis to have an even better idea. To get to know Stillio’s features, book a free demo and find out how it can help to improve your business drastically!