Graeme Dixon

There are many free tools (and even more very expensive ones) that only tell you so much. They only tell you how well your competitor is at SEO and selling stuff online. These tools will also tell your competitor the same thing. So, where's the competitive advantage in that? You have to ask the right questions to the right people, gather the information, analyse what's going on, and then use it to create a competitive advantage. That's competitor analysis. 90% of competitor analysis stays in the report pages because the competitor analysis has not concluded with suggested actions. Most of the time, no action is taken based on competitor analysis as it's too much hassle.

SimilarWeb, SEMrush, and Ahrefs are good tools. However, reading a competitor's website isolates what they tell their market and why they differentiate. Then, talk to their customers and ask them why they differentiate. Then, and perhaps the most eye-opening, speak to your competitors' salespeople and listen to what they are actually saying to sell their product or service. Tools are great, but talking to people is a dying but priceless art.

When attempting to differentiate your company from competitors, the place to start is to push AI into your offering for no reason. Just because your competitor has it. Seriously though, the first place to start when differentiating yourself from a competitor is to ask the people who really know. That's your customers. They have used their hard-earned money to buy what you sell. Define why they did this. It's a great start to building your differentiation.

The biggest skill and a dying art that is just as important, if not more than "Data literacy" and "information literacy". 20 odd years in competitive intelligence, and I have never used either of those phrases. More BS to make research more complicated than it is. The biggest skill is the ability to pick up the telephone and talk to someone. Or to meet over a coffee and get their take on the situation, competitor or market. Information literacy? Isn't the ability to read words and understand their meaning?

The biggest thing to consider is this: Do you really want to get an investor on board? Do you want to spend time reporting to someone and preparing the investor reporting packs? Is that what you went into business to do? To be your own person or replaced by a boss who knows less about the business than you do? Then do you want to spend the next 6 to 12 months chasing an investor? Who's building and creating while you are pitching to someone? Of course, it may not be like this. You may have that generative AI that's going to give Mark Zuckerberg a run for his money. You may get the best investor in the world chasing you, and you may have the money on the table after your first pitch.

Investors can fall prey to the herd mentality. It’s safer, less daunting, and frankly, less work to follow the trail blazed by others. But it’s also a path to mediocrity. The investment industry often operates on a ‘hit-and-miss’ philosophy. If a few investments out of many succeed, it’s considered a win. But why settle for this hit-and-miss approach when competitive intelligence could tip the scales? So you have to use all your competitive intelligence skills to tell investors how great you are and but prove it by showing how smashing the market is. Ripe for investment. A proper competitor analysis can go a long way to differentiate yourself from others. Take time to see where you sit in the market & how you will win.