The Third Research Category: Your Competitors or Replacements

You already know the 4:20+Research Method is made up of the four research categories. The third Category is your competitors or other products and activities that replace your solution.

When researching competitors, you are not looking for ideas or words to copy. The last thing you want is to look and sound like everyone else. You don’t want to blend in.

Rather you want to identify what competitors are doing so you can say something different, hopefully better, and more compelling.

Again, we’ve included a Competitor Research Doc with your course materials. We recommend you either copy the Google doc to your own google drive, or download and print the PDF version to take notes as you research. We’ve included a few lines after each question so you can add notes, but you’ll be gathering far more information than you can fit on those lines, so don’t limit yourself to the space on the forms. Pull out a notebook or extra sheet of paper to capture everything you need as you answer these questions.

You might not need to ask all of these questions. And some questions you will want to edit to reflect your niche, your customer, and the work you do. This is just a starting point, but we’ve tried to include just about everything you need to know to get started.

The first question on this document is simple: Who else sells your product? You want to identify direct competitors. If the problem you fix is lack of entertainment—and yeah, this isn’t exactly a bleeding neck problem, but it illustrates what we’re looking for here—and we’re selling tickets to a comedy show, your direct competitors would be a list of other comedy shows in the area.

The next question is: What other solutions do prospects use to solve their problem? In addition to direct competitors, we’re looking for replacements. These are products that are similar, but not direct competitors. So using our comedy show example, this would include other entertainment options like plays, movies, and concerts.

The next question is: What other solutions do prospects use instead of solving their problem? These are substitutes. Again, thinking of our comedy show example, substitutes would include activities like staying home to watch Netflix or read a book. It would also include other entertainment options like amusement parks and museums. These aren’t competitors or replacements, but other options that work as a substitute for the person with that entertainment need.

Next let’s look at how competitors (and substitutes and replacements) are talking about their solutions. We want to make a note of the headlines that our competitors are using to collect insights on the promises, features and benefits they focus on. Are they using interesting strategies to get the word out? Ultimately we may choose to write about some of these same things, but we want to make sure to find our own language as we do that.

The next question is similar: What hooks and ideas do they use to promote their product? Again make a note of the ideas competitors are using for future reference, but not to copy.

The next question: What promises do competitors make? Are they focused on speed? Cost? Value? Quality? You may find that many competitors don’t make any big promises at all. But make a note of any promises they DO make.

What claims do competitors make? We want to collect claims like promises. Ultimately you may want to address some of these same claims (indirectly) in our copy. So make a note of them now. To be clear, if you decide to write about similar claims and promises, you won’t use your competitor’s words. That’s plagiarism. But you need to know how they say what they say before you can write something different.

What benefits do they emphasize? Similar to the above, you just want to understand the marketing arguments already out there in the marketplace.

Finally, do they have a mechanism that delivers the results? Is it unique? You may find that mechanisms are hard to identify in your competitor’s copy. That’s not unusual because most marketers don’t think about mechanisms. And unique mechanisms are rare. This is good, because it opens up the opportunity for you to create, name, and talk about your own product’s unique mechanism.
Another quick recap. Most of this information will help you avoid looking like your competitors. But to find it, you’ll need to ask your clients who they think are their competitors. Then investigate yourself. You may only needt o look at 2-3 to get a sense of what most everyone else is doing. Just know that understanding the market puts you so much farther ahead.