I love the simplicity of Sun Tzu's insights.
They give us a lot to think about.
So yes, Sun Tzu wrote The Art of War, and it's primarily military insights.
But still, there's a lot to learn:
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”
"Opportunities multiply as they are seized."
I'll add to this nugget of wisdom and say, if you know your enemy’s weakness, the battle is half-won–that is if you act and leverage their weakness for your own gain.
In this article, we’ll explore how you can find your competitor’s weak spots and how to target them effectively.
This is a crucial part of competitive analysis that all businesses should know, and with the right tools, it can be a simple process.
If you’re looking for ways to outperform your competitors, read on.
Identify Weaknesses of Your Competitors, So You Can Gain a Competitive Edge
Our goal today is to ensure you can properly identify the weaknesses of your competitors.
The right ones - the ones, indeed, that are going to help you gain a competitive edge.
The truth is, there aren't 1,000 different weaknesses you can exploit – and you need to build a process around this, so you can scale your company.
Here are the main ones you should look for:
- Distribution (they're not using an acquisition channel that can bring clients)
- Retention (they're not keeping their clients around long enough)
- Pricing (they're not serving the whole market because they're underpriced or overpriced)
- Operations (they don't ship correctly, lack support, etc.)
- Wrong focus (they're serving a large market, but they lack specific features for a valuable niche within their market)
That's it.
There are other weaknesses, of course – but these are the ones that are the easiest to exploit so you can gain another competitive edge.
A company can't get all these points 100% right for all their addressable market.
No one ever did, no one ever will.
So every company has flaws around these pillars: these are weaknesses you can exploit to your own advantage.
Indeed, each one of them has a counter-attack built-in:
- Distribution: Invest where your competitors are not invested enough
- Retention: Build better loyalty programs, offers, etc.
- Pricing: Work on a better (maybe segmented?) pricing strategy
- Operations: That's hard work, but it pays off :)
- Wrong focus: Niche down your offers.
What Weaknesses Push People to Look at Other Brands
This is an interesting subset of weaknesses: because these are the ones you:
- Don't want to have yourself; otherwise, you definitely have a Retention weakness, and
- If a competitor has one of them, then you can improve your position because of it.
These weaknesses are of 3 kinds:
- Retention weaknesses: not enough effort to renew customers or turn them into repeated customers
- Pricing weaknesses: overpriced is sometimes an issue when it comes to get repeated purchases. Sometimes, some competitor might also be underpriced: they have a good value for acquiring first time customers who want to try, but not enough value for repeated high-value customers.
Assess Your Competitors' Strengths and Weaknesses
To correctly assess your competitors' weaknesses, you need to track them correctly over time.
It's okay to check how a competitor is doing from time to time, and you can get a good overview from these snapshots.
But the real insights come when you track a competitor over time.
That's where you can instantly detect what they're testing, what they're doubling down on, and if they're improving on their marketing metrics.
To automatically assess your competitors' strengths and weaknesses, you have a simple choice to make.
Get a platform that will do it for you on autopilot: Panoramata.co
Here's an example of the data that you can gather on a competitor. The ones that are the most helpful to identify the weaknesses of a competitor are:
- Reviews & Reviews Evolution over time
- Ads Evolution over time and USP analysis
- Promotional level over time
- Rank all your competitors automatically
- And more!
What Are Ahead Signs of Weaknesses?
We often get this question.
For me, there are two signs that clearly show that something is going on and are clear signs of incoming weaknesses:
- Too many promotions - for this, you can clearly track on Panoramata the level of promotions a company is doing vs. the previous period or the previous year.
- Average review grade is decreasing over time - this might also be a sign of a company that is just starting to scale. However, if the decrease is very brutal, they have clearly mismanaged their acquisition processes and are not finding the right customers for them.
5 Steps to Finding Your Competitor’s Weaknesses
Reach out to your colleagues (and friends)
Your sales and customer success teams interact directly with prospects and customers so they know your competitive landscape well. They will often know the latest news about your competitors, especially those not readily available online.
On the other hand, prospective customers are a firsthand source of info because they’ve considered your competitors and may already have booked a demo with them or talked to their sales rep.
To gather information from your team, simply ask your sales and customer reps for their insights.
To collect insights from your customers, get in touch with your customer service reps. Your customer success team works closely with your existing customers and while these customers have already been won over, your competitors will still try to reel them in.
You can even directly ask these customers about the communication they’ve received from your competitors.
You can also conduct:
- Interviews
- Focus groups
- Surveys (for your customers)
A little dash of field intelligence can enhance your competitor analysis. It takes some time but the information you gather might just be the key to finding your competitor’s weak points.
Read customer reviews
Online reviews are often the first thing people check when looking up a restaurant or store they’re interested in. This goes for competitor spying too.
You need to check what your competitor’s customers are saying about them and note both the positive and negative points. Your competitor’s way of talking about themselves will be different from how customers perceive them.
Find these reviews at places like:
- Google reviews
- Review sites like G2
- Your customer’s own website
- Social media
You can find insights in both good and bad reviews so don’t neglect looking for positive reviews. Analyze the reviews for trends in sentiments.
What are recurring points mentioned by negative reviews? What are customers with positive reviews leaving out or not mentioning?
Ask questions like:
- What is it like to use the product?
- What is the quality of the product?
- What are the product’s features?
- How is the product different from yours and other competitors?
Visit their website
Your competitor’s website and social media will highlight their unique selling points but it will also reveal their shortcomings. Check their website from the perspective of a customer and see where it’s lagging or offering a detrimental user experience.
Scrutinize their website for the following:
- Loading speeds
- User-friendliness
- Mobile Optimization
- Images and design
- Products
- Pricing (discount policy, pricing model, variations in prices)
- Promotions and sales tactics
Sign up for their newsletter
While on your competitor’s website, find a signup link for their newsletter and subscribe to it. By doing this, you’re exposing yourself to their hidden campaigns.
You’ll discover how they’re nurturing leads and how they’re enticing them through discounts and promotions. You’ll learn what copy they’re using over and over and how they’re designing their CTAs.
In the process, you will see what they’re lacking, whether it’s email frequency, subject lines, or discount offers. And if you find that they don’t have a newsletter at all, you have then learned one of their big weaknesses.
Evaluate their SEO strategy
Next, go through your competitor’s content to find content gaps and peek at their SEO strategy.
Look at their blog posts and analyze what keywords they’re targeting. Also check their articles for:
- Accuracy
- Grammar
- Spelling
- Tone
- Titles
- URL
- Metadata
- Internal and external links
You can target these weaknesses and content gaps in your marketing later on. Look closely at the things that they’re not doing with their organic content efforts to find these gaps.
3 Ways to Take Advantage of Your Competitor’s Weaknesses
Highlight your differentiators
After gathering competitor data and taking stock of your competitor’s weaknesses, the next step is integrating those insights into your messaging.
Revise your unique value proposition and other copy on your website, social media, newsletters, and ads to target your competitor’s weaknesses and highlight how you’re different.
Just knowing their weaknesses won’t lift your brand up. It doesn’t mean you will succeed immediately and have a leg up against them forever. You still need to do something in order to propel your business forward.
Fill content gaps
By now you know your competitor’s content gaps, which means you know what content to create or improve on to build a stronger web presence. Create better articles, ebooks, webinars, and newsletters.
Double down on the content that your competitor is neglecting. Also, look at how they approach SEO (backlinking, keywords, images) to find ideas for your organic search efforts.
Be proactive and act on the data you’ve collected
Don’t be complacent after knowing your competitor’s shortcomings. You have to act and be proactive. Just knowing their weaknesses won’t lift your brand up. It doesn’t mean you will succeed immediately and have a leg up against them forever. You still need to do something to propel your business forward.
So, whatever you do, don’t sit on your laurels. Plan your next steps, then execute them. Keep testing and tweaking.
Competitor analysis is a never-ending process. Your competitor may also be trying to work on their flaws and in a few months, those weaknesses will be rectified.
That’s why ongoing competitor tracking (at least every week) is vital to your success. Tools like Panoramata make this load considerably lighter because it collects all competitor information for you, from ads to emails, and feeds them in real-time to your dashboard with succinct summaries and highlights. That means saying goodbye to manual and piecemeal data gathering.
Sign up today to find your competitor’s weaknesses and boost your competitive advantage.
FAQs
How to assess a competitor's strengths and weaknesses?
Start by analyzing their products, pricing, marketing strategies, customer reviews, and online presence. Look for areas where they excel and where they fall short compared to your business.
How do you assess competitive advantage?
Identify what sets your competitors apart, such as unique products, brand loyalty, or strong market presence. Then compare it to your own advantages to see how you can outperform them.
How to do a SWOT analysis of a competitor?
List their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats by evaluating their internal performance and external factors like market trends or customer preferences. This framework helps you pinpoint areas to leverage or avoid in your own strategy.
