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87% of companies say that their market has become more competitive in the last three years, according to the 2019 State of Competitive Intelligence Report. With markets becoming more competitive, doing a thorough competitor analysis is a crucial step to getting a 360 view of the competitive and market landscape. 

Short on time? Download our Competitive Analysis Template here

What is a Competitor Analysis?

A competitor analysis is a lot more than a feature comparison sheet. In fact, some competitive intelligence (CI) specialists will say to cover product features last and instead focus on areas like finances, positioning, or campaigns. Ultimately, the most powerful competitor analysis provides a complete view across many aspects of the competitive landscape, including where each company compares to the other on various dimensions.

There are many dimensions to a competitive analysis - market and leadership evaluations, sales and marketing assessments, and, of course, in-depth reviews of competitors’ products. A competitive product analysis is an evaluation and comparison of your competitors’ products and how your own products stack up. A thorough competitive product analysis involves looking at many dimensions, including functionality, reliability, and use cases. Whether you’re starting from scratch or updating an existing analysis, this can be a large undertaking, so here are a few tips to focus your efforts and get maximum impact from your work.

How you communicate your company’s unique solutions to the market is critical to attract and engage potential buyers. Great messaging requires both a deep understanding of your target personas as well as an analytical view of the competitive landscape. Getting deep market and persona knowledge has always played a key role in crafting great messaging, but looking at competitors’ messaging is an often overlooked step. However, without completing a competitor analysis, you risk having your messaging fall flat in a sea of similar and undifferentiated content.

Here’s how to capture, analyze, and continuously monitor the competitive messaging landscape.

When you’re designing your homepage, you want to make sure you’re selling your brand upon first impression, but also not bombarding prospects with too much copy or overwhelming images. Ideally, you want to have messaging that resonates with your target audience, recognizable branding, and images or graphics that tie it all together. Some companies may choose photographs, stock photos, personalized graphics, videos, or product images. In fact, based on our analysis of the top 100 technology companies, 76% used stock photos, 72% feature images of people, 59% feature their products, and 8% feature illustration on their homepage. No matter what imagery a company uses, if it captivates your target site visitor, it’s doing its job. Let’s take a look at six companies who use imagery in unique ways on their homepage.