I am thrilled to announce that Forrester Research has named Crayon a “Leader” in The Forrester New Wave™: Market and Competitive Intelligence Platforms, Q4 2019 report. We believe this designation is a reflection of our commitment to helping customers drive meaningful impact in their organizations through competitive intelligence (CI).
“Who are your competitors?” is a seemingly simple question that can be surprisingly difficult to answer. Do you answer with your most common competitors from a sales perspective? Or, the leaders in the industry even if you don’t compete directly? Or, the companies you’re not yet competitive with, but you hope to be after certain product development efforts? Do you repeat those answers for each of the verticals and geographies you serve as well? Tackling competitive intelligence (CI) in an ever-growing competitive landscape is challenging -- you could spend every waking hour researching every competitor if you took this wide approach. And there may be value in evaluating each of those players. But for your own sake and the sake of your stakeholders who will leverage your CI deliverables, it can be incredibly helpful to focus those efforts on groups of competitors. In other words, taking a tiered approach to competitive intelligence can help you focus on the highest priority companies and help deliver digestible and actionable resources.
These past couple of months, I’ve had the privilege of speaking at the Product Marketing Community events to talk about how product marketers can leverage competitive insights to drive revenue. During my conversations with these product marketers, one theme that stood out was that product marketers have a difficult time prioritizing competitive intelligence (CI).
A few things I heard:
“I wish we were doing CI more consistently, but we just don’t have the time.”
“Ugh, I’m so bad at keeping up with our competitive intel. It’s been ages since I’ve really sat down and looked at it.”
“It’s so important—we just simply don’t have the headcount to dedicate to it right now.”
Simply put—many product marketers don’t have time to do competitive intelligence effectively, and therefore it becomes deprioritized. It isn’t surprising—product marketing teams are notoriously understaffed, have very little budget, and are often juggling many competing priorities from various stakeholders.
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
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.
