Competitive Analysis Template

The competitive analysis template provides an analytic matrix of your company’s products or services and your competition.  Filling out a competitive comparison such as these forces you to evaluate what is important, how you rate, who are your competitors, and how you compare with them in the eyes, minds, hearts, and pocketbooks of customers.

The competitive analysis template, and more importantly, the research behind it, are critical to developing your brand and programs.  I cannot tell you how many clients discuss the uniqueness of their ideas, when there are pages of competitors who are frequently more experienced, cheaper, and even better, on Google or Amazon.  In particular, we are all frequently quilted of what I call “positive bias.”  Specifically, we believe our products or services have better people , better processes, excellent characteristics, better service, better quality, and are differentiated from our competition, with little objective analysis or comparison.

The research can be mostly completed by searching the internet on the competitors and industry.  However, it should be supplemented with actual store visits, phone calls, and product reviews where ever possible.

There are three key areas to consider in each of the template comparisons, where entrepreneurs can focus on branding and differentiation, in order to avoid common pitfalls and achieve greater success:

• How is your company and its products or services truly different?
• Do enough customers care about these differences?
• How can you most effectively communicate your differences within budget?