Step-By-Step Guide to Successfully Conducting a Competitor Research
Considering the ever-increasing market competition, keeping tabs on the competitors is a crucial business activity for any modern business. Competitor research has become so important for most companies that some even hire external professionals to track competitors and assess the competitive landscape on a regular basis.
However, developing a competitor research template need not always be complicated, time-consuming, and an expensive process, given the new wealth of data that can be assembled using the Internet. Heres how your business can benefit from competitive research, how to develop a competitor research template, and the most productive competitor research tools:
Step 1: Identify the source of research
The first step in developing a competitor research template is to determine whether to gather information in-house or hire a professional firm or consultant. One of the key benefits of hiring a consultant includes that they may have more expertise in gathering information and other intelligence data when compared to an in-house research team. However, this does not mean that you completely rule out the advantages of having an in-house competitor research team. They would be able to understand the business better and easily establish the competitive factors they want to track. Businesses must undertake a pros and cons evaluation of both the methods and choose the one that is best suited for their business –