Feb 02, 2021 | by Budi Tanrim
Business aware designer – Recognize your competitors
Position your product among the competition.
If people want to go from point A to point B. They can use a car. But there’s a bus or train or airplane as the alternatives.
Those are the competition.
After your team gets the Job to be Done (JTBD) from research. Consider to familiarize your team with the competitors.
Understand what available options that customers have to solve their problem will allow your team to start plan how to position your product differently than the other offerings.
1. List down competitors
There are three types of competitors:
- Direct competitors:
They do the same job in the same way (Uber v. Lyft) - Secondary competitors:
They do the same job in a different way (Bank v. Cryptocurrency) - Indirect competitors:
They do the different job with a conflicting outcome (McD v.Fitness app)
The competition arena
If you’re still in the middle of the research, your team can generate it based on assumptions and knowledge as a starting point. But you should notify the team that it will be changed according to the research findings from research.
If you already have the research findings, your team should know which products the customers mostly used. It would be fantastic to get the quantitative data of what other products that your customers use to get their “job” done.
2. Map them in the arena
I love to put each competitor in the sticky notes and map them like this:
Map the competitors
3. Analyze their strengths and weaknesses
Pick the top three strongest competitors. I’d focus on the direct and secondary competitors first if I’m building a new product. Analyze their strengths and weaknesses.
Explore the strengths and weaknesses
4. Explore the differentiation area
Look at the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors, is there any area you can offer better?
Don’t forget to focus on the customer’s JTBD as the primary anchor of your conversation. Ask yourself:
- How the competitors do the ‘job’ for the customers?
- Why customers chose the product from competitor B over Y?
- What’s the pain point customers have now?
- You can also start to explore a new area that they haven’t offer before. Take Netflix, for example, they innovate that people can stream from everywhere. Which something that traditional Cable TV doesn’t provide.
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