The military strategist Sun Tzu wrote, “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”
We’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 at ways to outperform your competitors, read on.
5 Steps to Finding Your Competitor’s Weaknesses
Reach out to your colleagues
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.
