Have you ever played a game with loved ones and have to look around to challenge the competition?
Whether you currently own a business or want to start your own business, you need to do the same thing.
A competition analysis helps you to identify your competitors and to research their products, sales and marketing strategies. In this way you will get to know your place in the market, how you can stand out from your competition and improve their processes.
Below you will learn what a competitive matrix is, and take a look at some templates and examples.
What is a competitive matrix?
A competition matrix is a way to visualize your competition analysis. There are different types of competitive matrices that you can use to compare yourself to your competitors. You can use a competitive matrix to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, or threats to your business.
Before diving into the world of competitive matrices, it’s important to understand that there are several different types that you can use to compare your business to your competitors:
- Function and benefit analysis
- SWOT analysis
- Competitive strategic overview
- Content Marketing Strategies
- Check the tracking
In essence, you can use a competitive matrix to compare all of the characteristics of your business with a competitor.
Sometimes these matrices are visual in nature (a drawn chart), but sometimes it’s just an Excel document with the information listed in columns.
The aim of the competition matrix is to see the competitive landscape and your position in the market at a glance. This is a great way to identify gaps in the market and enhance your unique value proposition.
Perhaps after looking at a competitive matrix, you might come up with new product ideas, or new tools or features that you hadn’t considered before. Or maybe you have a ton of ideas on how to improve your content marketing strategy.
Regardless, you can use a competitive matrix for many reasons. You can use it to develop new ideas or train sales reps on how to differentiate your company from the competition.
After you figure out what you are going to do with the information, write down your ideas, develop KPIs, and do this analysis on a regular basis so that you stay in the loop on your strategy.
Now that you know what a competitive matrix is and how to use one, let’s review some templates that you can use for your own strategy.
Competitive matrix templates
1. Competitive landscape map with two features
One type of competitive matrix that you can create is a simple comparison of functions. With this information, you can show where your company compares to competitors.
The functions can be something like price or customization potential. You then place the logos of each company (including yours) on the graphic based on how well a company is doing at a particular function. This matrix is about visualizing who is doing what better so you can see what you need to work on and how you can stand out from the competition.
Download this template
2. Content Marketing Analysis Template
As a content marketer, this is my favorite template. You can use this template to compare social media followers, blog strategy, email strategy, SEO, etc. This will help you decide where to focus your content strategy – should you put a focus on Twitter rather than Facebook? When you download this template, it also includes a diagram and other strategies to analyze.
Download this template
3. SWOT analysis template
A basic competitive matrix is the SWOT analysis. By doing a SWOT analysis, you can identify areas where you can make improvements. You should do a SWOT analysis for yourself but also for your competition. Understanding the weaknesses of your competition can help your sales reps make improvements in these areas.
Download this template
4. Check the tracker
With the help of a review tracker matrix, you can see at a glance what types of reviews you are getting compared to your competitors. It’s important not to forget about reviews as they can have a huge impact on a company. This template also allows you to use a scoring system to normalize the averages.
Download this template
After you’ve reviewed these templates, it’s time to see what a competitive matrix looks like in action. Let’s look at some examples below.
Examples of competitive matrix
1. HubSpot
This is a public HubSpot competition matrix that compares the total prices of our CRM to those of Salesforce. This is a standard matrix designed to help people see the difference between CRMs at a glance.
Image source
2. SugarSync
This is a great example of what a feature matrix could look like. SugarSync compares its range of functions with the competition in an easy-to-understand visualization.
Image source
3rd 360iResearch
In this example, 360iResearch reports on survey management software. This is a graph that shows which companies have the best product satisfaction and business strategy.
Competitive matrices are great tools that you can use to find out how you differentiate yourself from your competitors. You can learn your unique value proposition and identify areas for improvement.