Understanding Competitor Analysis: Strategies, Examples, and Insights (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Caressa Summitt, and today we're going to chat about FAB 50 slide number 14. Slide 14 is all about the competition. But before we get into the nuts and bolts of the slide, I'd like to show you a clip to reinforce why knowing your competition is so important. In that clip, Jamie Lannister was confident that the Lannister Army could hold itself against the Darth Raki. What he didn't know is that Darnarius would come in on a dragon. Competitor analysis can help you find those dragons that might be in your competition's back pocket. This can help you avoid getting burned, but also avoiding PR nightmares and possible bankruptcy of the company or product failure. To start, it's best to look at your competitor's strategies and evaluating their four Ps, just like you would your own. So looking at their product to find differences, similarities, looking at their price, could you leverage yourself as a higher price, more exclusive item, or are you a low cost value option? Looking at their promotion and the place, where are they promoting themselves and how, and what markets are they already in? You can also look at your competitor's objectives. Are they focused on long term growth, short term growth, just acquiring a different side of the market share? This can help you strategize if you want to leverage your resources to do the same or position yourself differently. A SWOT analysis can be helpful. This will show you their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and any threats, like a dragon. You might want to also consider their prior reaction patterns. Look at if they're the type of company that responds at all, if they're selective, only responding to certain types of attacks, if they're a tiger, responding to any and every attack, or if they're a bit of a wild card. This can help you set a game plan in advance in case there is any kind of counterattack from the competition. Let's look at a real world example. Geico prides themselves on being an auto insurance company that can save you 15% or more in 15 minutes. Geico has effectively aligned themselves and branded themselves with the number 15. They do this in print advertisements, through direct mail, and also a lot of their online campaign ads and TV advertisements. In 2014, eSurance took a direct attack on the 15-minute Geico campaign. You can hear in the ad, 15 minutes for a quote isn't so sweet. eSurance built an entire advertising campaign attacking Geico's 15-minute quote. eSurance claims they can do it in half the time, and the advertising campaign ran parallels showing characters that were out of touch with technology getting a 15-minute quote, and then stating that eSurance could do it again in half the time, seven and a half minutes. You can see some of the copy, 15 minutes for a quote isn't how it works anymore, 15 minutes for a quote is crazy. You can see Milton taking selfies by putting his face on a copy machine, and of course beloved Beatrice who posts her vacation pictures on her wall and verbally unfriends people. These characters are shown as being out of touch with technology, and the parallel that's drawn is that Geico is also out of touch with technology. This was the launch of eSurance's Insurance for the Modern World campaign, which infers that eSurance is for the modern world and competitors are not. Thank you.