To analyze the market, you can commission research from a specialized agency or conduct your own research. It's best to start with a category analysis: this will help you understand what's happening in the market, who the key players are, and how they're adapting to the current reality. Official statistical sources can be helpful here, such as Statista, IQVIA, WordStat, and Yandex's industry research.
Next, we move on to identifying competitors. uk business email database 500k The biggest mistake at this stage is to view market leaders as competitors.
It's important to remember that their product may only partially compete with yours, or not compete at all.
There are three types of competitors. Let's look at them using nasal decongestants as an example:
The first type of competition is products/services identical to yours. For example, xylometazoline sprays.
The second type of competition is products or services similar to yours but different in composition or a specific parameter. For example, not a spray, but drops with xylometazoline, or a spray with xylometazoline and depanthenol, or even the volume of these drops (your SKU is 10 ml, while your competitors have 30 ml).
The third type of competition is products/services that differ from yours in two or more ways. For example, xylometazoline-free seawater drops and sprays.
6 Steps to a Business Marketing Strategy
It may be that competitors of the second and third types are the leaders. When developing your strategy, you focus on them, as you want to shift consumer attention to your product.
But this way you will spend a lot of effort, which will not give the desired result.
The switching coefficient from competitors is different for each type: for the first type it will be 0.6, for the 2nd – 0.35, for the 3rd – 0.001.
After the analysis, we build a competitive matrix. I prefer to use the "Competitiveness Polygon," where I select key factors and then analyze and compare the data:
6 Steps to a Business Marketing Strategy
Step 2: Define and digitize the goal
The point is: we focus on the goal and determine a timeframe for it.
After a thorough market and competitor analysis, you can begin comparing your desired goals and capabilities. Here, I recommend the "Matryoshka Principle": first, describe the business goal, then gradually expand on it to ultimately reach a digitalized result or media objective:
The business goal tells us about the growth of profits/sales.
A marketing goal answers the question: “How can the business goal be achieved?”
The communication goal helps to understand what should happen during or after communication with the consumer.
The media task shows the result of communication with the consumer in the media.
For example: a business goal is to increase market share by 10%. A marketing goal is to increase product awareness by 15% and encourage users to switch from competitors. A communication goal is to reveal the unique selling proposition (USP) so users understand how the product will benefit them. A media objective is to increase audience reach by 70% within three months, increase customer loyalty by 15%, and increase purchases by 10%.