Competitor Analysis.... How?

[Peanut Butter Man]

Im having a bit of a dim day today.

I want to look at information regarding competitor sales, market share etc for a food product. Some competitors are medium size while some are multi nationals.

The product (Peanut Butter) is what I am looking at. What are the resources I can use (free if possible) to get the information I need.

Also, Maybe someone can tell me if and how I can tell how much of a product is sold via Amazon.

Im expecting nothing more than ball park information but that will be fine.

Any help will be good thanks.

 

[Kay]

It's an interesting question. Funnily enough, I recently wrote quite a long piece on the very same subject. (Sorry I can't give you a link as it's behind a paywall.)

I'll try to give you a potted version.

1. Identify your competitors. Look in the search engines and social media (eg Facebook) and see who is prominent for your keywords.

2. Get an overview of their performance by using tools such as Alexa, Quantcast and Compete. These tools are very inaccurate and generally have a US bias, but they do at least give an overview.

3. Next have a look at some website analytics. If you type "website analytics tools" into your favourite search engine, you will get countless results for tools which measure the sites' performance. Many of these tools are free.

4. Check the social popularity of the sites. Use tools such as Klout. (Search for more if you need them.)

5. Check your competitors' backlinks to see who is linking to them. Maybe they would be interested in your site too (but not for link swaps, obviously). You could try tools from MarketSamurai or MajesticSEO.

6. You can also see how well they're performing in the search engines. Again, there are tools, eg SEMRush.

7. You can often find out other information about them from their own sites. Sometimes they like to boast about being the market leader and that they made x zillion sales last year. Also, they often provide traffic figures for advertisers so they might have that on their site too. Of course, they want to talk themselves up so take it with a pinch of salt. While you're at it, have a look and see how they're making money. You might get some ideas.

By the time you've done all that lot you'll have a good feel for how your competitors are performing in the market.

Most of the tools I've mentioned above are free or at least have a free trial.

Hope this helps.

 

[Peanut Butter Man]

Thanks Kay, I have heard of most of the above and will have a play. To add to your list you could add Screaming Frog... (Google it) type in the domain name and find backlinks, linked sites, SEO stuff and images used for SEO and text added

 

[Blood Lust]

Im having a bit of a dim day today.

I want to look at information regarding competitor sales, market share etc for a food product. Some competitors are medium size while some are multi nationals.

The product (Peanut Butter) is what I am looking at. What are the resources I can use (free if possible) to get the information I need.

Also, Maybe someone can tell me if and how I can tell how much of a product is sold via Amazon.

Im expecting nothing more than ball park information but that will be fine.

Any help will be good thanks.

Duedil is free to join and will show you the revenues and values of other companies. You'll still need to do your research into who your peanut butter competitors are first.

You'll need to go through government websites if you wish to ascertain how big the peanut butter market is. PLCs may or may not give you an indepth breakdown of their revenues on their financial statements on their websites.

 

[Peanut Butter Man]

Thanks Blood, I had already undertaken market research using the likes of Mintel and Datamonitor which do give information on areas such as market size etc.

Some information on revenues can be found in company annual reports if they are large enough.

I was just looking for a little more really

 

[ethical PR]

Sure you have already come across this during your market research but I use the British Library Business Centre quite a lot.

 

[Peanut Butter Man]

Ooops Ehthical.... I missed that one... I finished a degree last year and had access to lots of goodies for free that would cost a fortune otherwise. I didnt have to look too far