Everyone loves to complain about how competitive the SaaS market is. Moreover, technology has made it easier to create game-changing services. Also, new categories are popping up every day. Due to the fact that customers can choose from more options than ever, it has become much more difficult to have a stable and sustainable competitive advantage. This means that the SaaS industry is only going to get more competitive. So why spend time complaining when you should be competing instead?

Marketers and business owners can use new software and technology to find out more about their competition. Nowadays, it is extremely important to conduct in-depth competitor analysis regularly to stay one step ahead.

What is competitive analysis?

Competitive analysis is the process of identifying your competitors and evaluating their strategies to determine their strengths and weaknesses relative to your own product or service. The goal is to collect necessary information about them.

Why is it important to research competitors?

Consequently, will give you an answer to these questions:

• How does my competitor acquire new customers?
• What type of content do they publish on social media and what topics do they cover?
• What channels do they use for their sales process and how long does it take?
• Is it easy for customers to switch away from your competitors?
• What kind of barriers are there for entering the industry and in relation to each competitor?

You have probably heard the saying “Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies even closer.” When it comes to conducting SaaS competitive analysis, this is only half of the story. In the SaaS industry, keeping your enemy close won’t magically improve your company’s revenue.

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Hence, conducting SaaS competitive analysis, or as the marketers call it “study the enemy” can help you:

• Understand the “battlefield” and where your rivals are positioned.
• Orient your business in the marketplace.
• Identify the quickest path forward.
• Understand market dynamics in order to find an optimal way to reach your target customers.
• Determine how your company and your service fits in the current environment.

How to conduct competitive analysis?

Competitive analysis is an exercise of comparing your business, product(s), and service(s) to other companies in the market to find similarities and differences.

The most critical and time-consuming part of this process is choosing the right competitors to analyze. In other words, the competitors you select determine the final analysis.

Here is a list of questions you need to answer when analyzing your industry rivals:

• How many employees do my competitors have?
• Is my competitor expanding or scaling down?
• In what geographical market do they operate?
• How much have my competitors raised thus far?
• Who are my competitor’s investors?
• What is my competitor’s customer count?
• Can I estimate my competitor’s growth rate or revenue?
• Have my competitors acquired companies? If yes, in which industries?
• What is my competitor’s market share?
• What are my competitor’s top organizational strengths and weaknesses?

Solutions from other companies

However, you do not need a spy kit to find the answers to these questions. Hence, keep in mind that by using services like BizzBee Solutions, all the information regarding your competitors is easily attainable. At BizzBee Solutions, we help companies discover their top 10 competitors and use all the gathered knowledge for your advantage.

BizzBee Solutions provides competitor info from 5 categories:

1. General information (founding date, their investors, mergers and acquisitions, size, employees, website.)
2. Technical information (features used, previous or upcoming updates, mobile apps used.)
3. Financial information (their pricing model, revenues or annual reports.)
4. Market information (market downloads, industries, and countries served.)
5. Marketing information (recent marketing activities and whatthe competitors’ clientele saysabout them and their products/services.)

Likewise, with our services, the companies have the ability to discover if the competitors’ solution shares the same features or practices as theirs. Also, they can find out the points which differentiate them from the competitions’ offering. Furthermore, BizzBee Solutions helps you uncover the available alternatives to your SaaS, by reviewing the number of SaaS solutions available on the market similar to yours and the solutions that solve the same problem but are not SaaS.

As a result, all these findings will be presented in a final report the client receives. This info will not only help you clearly recognize where to invest your resources but also how to compete in the most crowded markets. Therefore, you have the foundation to develop your marketing and sales strategies and position yourself as a leader on the market too.

Final tip

Above all, the primary goal of a competitor analysis is to understand the marketplace and what makes you different from the other players in your industry. Next, after the research process is finished, use all the gathered info to create a battle card for each competitor. A competitive battle card is a visual board for your sales and marketing team as well. This board helps sales understand the strengths and weaknesses of their rivals and how to win customers when going up against them as well.

Conclusion

In summary, researching your competitor’s needs to become part of the culture of your organization. Don’t think of this research as a business development exercise. With other words, look at it as building a team of customer-focused and competition-aware members that understand their role in the customer experience. Likewise, work to ensure that all customers are satisfied with the solution you offer.

Moreover, remember that there are no guarantees in the business. Certainly, anyone can get into your space and start eating up your market share. In fact, it is better to be ready to compete. But, keep in mind that your focus should always be on what separates you from the hundreds and thousands of other companies in your market space.

Finally, you can’t expect smooth sailing. Your competitors will copy your features, your strategies, and sometimes even your unique vision. However, if you learn how to compete effectively, build a loyal customer base, and constantly create value, the competition won’t have a chance against you.