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To be successful as a Nigerian business owner in today’s fast-paced market, you need to know how to conduct competitor analysis for your business. A thorough competitor analysis will help you stay ahead by providing valuable information about your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses.

Doing a competitor analysis for your business helps you learn more about market trends, customer tastes, and possible business prospects. With this information, you can improve your goods, services, and strategies and eventually gain a more significant market share. You will learn how to conduct competitor analysis for your Nigerian business in this article, which is broken down into steps. These tips will help you confidently and accurately handle the competitive landscape, whether you’re just starting or want to make your current business stronger.

Identify your competitors

• Direct competitors: Find your main competitors before you can do a good competitor analysis for your business. The people you want to buy from these companies have the same or very similar goods and services. Knowing who they are is crucial because they are the biggest threat to your market share.

Start by listing companies in your market that work in the same area. You can find these competitors through internet searches, business directories, and social media. Read customer reviews, look at their websites, and see what products they sell. If a customer finds a better deal, product, or service, they might choose one of your direct competitors instead of you. For instance, if you run a bakery in Lagos and offer similar goods, other bakeries in the same city are your main competitors.

• Indirect competitors: When you do a competitor study for your business, you must look at both direct and indirect competitors. People who are indirect competitors of yours offer goods or services that are different from yours but can meet the exact needs or solve the same problem for customers.

For instance, your secondary competitors could be if you own a coffee shop, a nearby tea house, a fast food chain that serves breakfast, or even a convenience store that sells ready-made coffee. Even though you offer different products, these companies can take your people away.

Knowing your main and indirect competitors gives you a complete picture of your competitors. With this information, you can find holes in the market, guess what threats might come up, and look for ways to make your business stand out. You can stay ahead in the Nigerian market by developing strategies that meet the needs and wants of a wide range of customers if you are aware of all the different types of competition.

Gather information

• Do research online: When you do a competitor analysis for your business, it’s essential to get a lot of information about your rivals. A great way to do this is to do research online. Start by looking at your rivals’ websites to learn about their products, how much they cost, and what makes them unique. Pay attention to how their website looks and how easy it is to use, as these can affect how customers feel about them.

Look for news stories, press releases, and blogs about your rivals on search engines. Set up Google Alerts to be notified whenever your rivals are talked about online. You can also find helpful information on social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Check out the pages of your rivals to see how they interact with customers, what deals they offer, and how they handle customer feedback.

Online scores and reviews on sites like Google Reviews, Yelp, and TripAdvisor can show how happy your customers are and what problems they usually have. You can learn a lot about your rivals’ strengths and weaknesses by doing a lot of research online. This will help you position your business better in the Nigerian market.

• Offline research: When you do research on your competitors for your business, remember how proper offline research can be as well as online research. Going to the actual locations of your rivals can give you the information you need help getting online. Look at how their store is set up, how they treat their customers and the whole shopping experience. Watch how they show off their goods and any features that make them stand out.

Go to trade shows, workshops, and events in your field to meet other business owners and learn more about your rivals. Going to these events lets you see new goods, learn about market trends, and learn about your competitors’ tactics. Talking to providers and people in the same industry can also give you helpful information about how your competitors do business and where they stand in the market.

Studying your competitors online and offline gives you a complete picture. This all-around method lets you find ways to improve your products and services, spot gaps in the market, and develop ways to set your business apart from the others.

Analyse competitors’ offerings.

• Product and services: To do a good competitor analysis for your business, you must look closely at your rivals’ products and services. First, look at what services or goods they offer. Pay attention to the range, quality, and features of what they have to give. Check out their products and see if they provide anything you need or are better. What do they sell the most of?

Think about how your companies set their prices. Do their prices match yours, go up or down, or stay the same? Knowing how much they charge can help you decide if you need to change your prices or stress how much better your service is. Besides that, pay attention to any deals, discounts, or reward programmes they offer. These strategies can help you get and keep customers, and learning about them can help you develop strategies to beat your competitors.

• Unique selling points (USPs): When you do a competitor study for your business, it’s essential to know your competitors’ Unique Selling Points (USPs). USPs are the things that make a product or service different from others on the market. Find out what your rivals say their best qualities are. It could be the best quality, the friendliest customer service, the newest features, or the lowest prices you can find.

Look at how your rivals tell their customers about their USPs. Check out how they discuss these in their marketing papers, websites, and social media posts. Learning about their USPs lets you determine what makes your business unique. It also helps you make your marketing messages stronger by highlighting your skills.

By carefully examining your competitors’ products, services, and unique selling points (USPs), you can learn much about improving your own goods and services. This research is a must to stay competitive and thrive in the Nigerian market.

Evaluate competitors’ marketing strategies.

• Digital marketing: When you do a competitor analysis for your business, examining your competitors’ digital marketing tactics is essential. First, look at their websites. Look at their design, ease of navigation, quality of material, and call-to-action buttons. Pay close attention to how they do SEO. Check out the keywords they rank for and the kinds of content they write to get free traffic.

Next, check out how they’re active on social media. Check to see how busy they are on social media sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Note how engaged their followers are, what kinds of posts they make, how often they post changes, and how they talk to their followers. Check out their web ads, like Google Ads and ads on social media sites. Gaining knowledge about how they reach their audience and the words they use can help you make your digital marketing better.

• Traditional marketing: When you do a competitor analysis for your business, it’s essential to look at both digital and traditional marketing tactics that your competitors are using. Print ads, radio and TV spots, billboards, flyers, and sponsorships are all examples of traditional marketing. Keep an eye on where and how often your rivals use these conventional forms of advertising.

Think about the words and pictures they use in their ads. Are they trying to raise awareness of a business, sell certain products, or make deals? Keep an eye on their involvement in community events or sponsorships, as these can help spread the word about their business and improve their reputation.

By carefully looking at digital and traditional marketing strategies, you can see how your rivals get and keep customers. This study will help you determine what marketing strategies work and what you can change to improve your business so your business stays competitive in the Nigerian market.

Assess competitors’ market position.

• Market share: To do a good competitor study for your business, you must look at where your competitors stand. First, figure out how much of the market they have. Market share is the amount of the market a business owns compared to its rivals. You can understand this by looking at how much they sell, how many people they serve, and how long they’ve been in business.

To get this knowledge, look at financial statements, market research studies, and reports on the industry. If you can’t get exact numbers, you can determine their market share by looking at the number of physical sites, website traffic, and social media followers. Finding out how much of your competitors’ market helps you determine who the big players are and how much power they have in your business.

• Image of a brand: Another essential thing to look at is the reputation of your rivals’ brands. A brand’s reputation shows how people feel about it and its goods or services. To judge this, look at customer reviews, recommendations, and comments on social media. To get a complete picture, read both the good and negative comments.

Ask your customers what they think about your rivals in a survey. You can also look at partnerships, awards, and recognitions in the same field to see if they show that the brand has a good reputation. Also, pay close attention to how your competitors handle customer complaints and public relations issues, as these can significantly affect their image.

You can see where your competitors stand by looking at market share and company reputation. This information is beneficial when researching your competitors for your business. It helps you figure out what your competitors are good at and bad at, which lets you develop ways to improve your marketplace and reputation in the Nigerian market.

Identify strengths and weaknesses.

• SWOT search: To do a good competitor analysis for your business, you need to know your rivals’ pros and cons. The SWOT analysis is a valuable tool for this. As you may know, SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Make a list of what each rival does well to start. Some examples are a strong brand image, high-quality products, excellent customer service, or new ways of marketing.

Next, figure out their weaknesses. Check to see if they’re failing in these areas: lousy customer service, a small selection of products, old technology, or bad reviews from past customers. Knowing these weaknesses can help you find ways to make your business stand out and get ahead of the competition.

• Comparing to the competition: Competitive benchmarking is another good way. This means comparing how well your business is doing to your competitors based on essential factors like sales, customer happiness, market share, and online presence. First, determine which key performance indicators (KPIs) are critical for your business. The next step is determining how your rivals are doing in these areas.

When you benchmark, you can see how you stack up against your rivals. For instance, if you notice that a rival keeps customers much longer than you do, you can look into what they’re doing differently and use the same methods in your business. If, on the other hand, your rival is evil at something that you’re great at, you can use that to your advantage in your marketing to get more customers.

Using SWOT analysis and competitive benchmarking, you can get a good idea of your rivals’ strengths and weaknesses. This will give you helpful information to help you improve your plans, take advantage of market opportunities, and place your business correctly in the Nigerian market.

Develop Strategies Based on Analysis

• Making the most of strengths: When you look at your competitors as a business, the information you find should directly affect the decisions you make about your strategy. An essential part of this process is making the most of your skills. What does your company do well? How can these skills help you beat the competition? If your research shows that the quality of your product is better, make sure that your marketing efforts stress this. To get people who value your unique selling points (USPs), stress them out.

For example, if you have excellent customer service, make that a big part of your ads and emails to customers. Teach your employees how always to provide exceptional service, and ask happy customers to share their good experiences online. Focusing on what you do best will help you build a strong brand image and attract customers who will stick with you because they like what you do best.

• Dealing with weaknesses: Along with playing to your strengths, working on your flaws is essential. If you do a competitor analysis for your business, you might find places where your rivals are doing better than you. Find your weaknesses and work on them with this knowledge. If, for example, your rivals’ websites are more accessible for people to use, you should spend money on redesigning your own to make it better for people to use.

Suppose your customers tell you your delivery times are longer than your competitors. In that case, you should work on making your logistics and supply chain methods more efficient. Making changes based on what your competitors do well and what you know you need to work on can help you close the gap and become more competitive overall.

You can make your business more robust and competitive by developing plans that match your strengths and fix your flaws. By looking at your competitors, you can make intelligent choices to help you attract more customers, improve your marketplace, and grow the Nigerian market.

Read Also. What Are The Consequences Of Poor Customer Service For Nigerian Entrepreneurs?

Conclusion

In conclusion, if you want your business to succeed in Nigeria’s competitive market, you need to do a competitor study. Knowing their strengths and flaws lets you develop strategies that set you apart from your competitors. Sign up for your business on our online list today to take advantage of helpful information. Make yourself stand out from others in the Nigerian market and grow your business. Start immediately and see how it changes the competitiveness and exposure of your business.