Complete Guide to Perform Competitive Analysis When You Start Business in China

There is no doubt that you have to spend time on competitor analysis if you care about your business. Doing this, you may realize many things that you didn’t realize before about the market in which you are entering. The China market is favorable in terms of its great opportunities and fierce competitions. If you’re going to start business in China, then you need to analyze your future competitors all the more in order to know how do they do their business and what they are focusing on.

What is Competitive Analysis

A competitive analysis is a research made in order to better understand the competitive landscape and estimate opportunities, weaknesses, threats and strengthens of competing industry players, to optimize future business activities and utilization, such as marketing, product, sales or alike. The trick of competitive analysis is to find the tactics and methods that are used by your competitors.

Why Competitive Analysis Always Matters

Competitive Analysis is quite important when it comes to your business, especially when you start business in China, it will be what makes or breaks your business. It allows you to size up your competition and begin to understand your place in the market, helps you find hints that could validate your tactical plan, search for differentiating factors to fine-tune your messages and micro-segment relevant audiences. The process of collecting and analyzing information about competitors’ strengths and weaknesses in a legal and ethical manner can enhance business decision-making.


Competition always needs to be studied carefully and taken into consideration when starting business in China.

• You need to know who your competition is, and where they are positioned on the field. That’s how you keep your eye clear.
• Then you want to position your product/service/business in a unique way compared to your competition. That’s how you hit them where they aren't.
• Or you can be 100 times better than your competition. In other words, hit a home run and win that way.

Either way, you need to know who you’re competing with in order to win.

Besides, there is a lot to learn from competitors and their mistakes can be your free equity, you should learn from competition rather than reinventing the wheel. The previous person already spent years of their lives proving that something doesn’t work. You might as well learn the same lesson without spending the same resources. Don’t underestimate weak, local, or new competitors. You can learn a lot from every competitor. Even the tiniest one. I sometimes prefer looking at brand new competitors. They are usually hungrier, more innovative and much more creative in their marketing.

How to Perform Competitive Analysis

I recommend starting with a high-level analysis of each company's primary positioning, target customer, and core value proposition. Don't obsess over competitive analysis, you'll very quickly reach the point of gathering far more information than you need. Make a list of the top players in the market, and spend half-a-day reading as much as you can about them. As you do that, try to figure out a framework for what the industry competes on, such as price, design, target customer, style, brand, utility, platform, etc. The actual factors vary greatly by industry, so it's up to you to figure out the right ones.

Here are some of the steps you need to follow to conduct a thorough competitor analysis when you’re going to start business in China:

Set Your Goals

First and foremost, you have to decide what you want to accomplish out of your competitive analysis. Are you looking to exploit your competitor’s weaknesses, or looking for new market opportunities that your competitiors have ignored? Knowing your analysis goals upfront will provide you with better insight on how to research, develop an action plan, and execute.

Identify Competition

The next step is to identify competitors offering similar products or services. These include current as well as potential competitors. To find who your competitors are, you can ask your customers who else they are considering for the same product, search in the internet, or by attending trade shows, conferences, and seminars. Keep up-to-date with industry and market news related to your product to spot any up and coming competitors.

Collect Data

Once you know who your competitors are, you can kickstart your analysis by collecting data about them. Scout through these resources and collect as much data as possible.

Analyze and Compare Data

Once you have collected all the data you need, it’s time to analyze it. Merely collecting data is of no use until you put it to work. Comparing your own strategies, tactics, and metrics against your competitor’s can give you macro-level insight. You may gain insight on trends in the market and opportunities you are missing out on. For example, if you are getting only 2% of your traffic from organic search and your competitors are getting upwards of 10%, you know it’s time to revamp your SEO strategy.

Identify Areas for Improvement and Opportunity

After completing the competitive analysis, you now have a clear understanding of what your competitors are up to. It’s time to put this information to good use by finding out areas of improvements. Is it your social media strategy that’s stopping you from becoming dominant in your space? Is your customer service on par with your competitors? Does your product match in quality with your rivals? All of these questions can be answered through competitive analysis.

Now since the internet is a big arena where many businesses are carried out, you can get a lot of useful information about your competitors using the right web data extraction tools. Tools like Buzzsumo, Google Trends, Hubspot, and Alexa rankings are exceptional in providing insights for competitor websites like traffic sources, demographics, ad impressions, website load speeds, referral sources, keyword research, etc. For your competitor’s internet presence, you will want to evaluate and answer the questions such as:

Their Website: Design, brand style, type of ad placements, landing page optimization techniques…

Their Content Marketing Strategy: how often they blog, content form, any new methods…

Their Social Media Presence: numbers of fans or followers, any influencer marketing, target groups, how often they post…

Conclusion

In this article, I reviewed several competitor analysis techniques and suggested steps to do it yourself. To analyze the competitors seems to be much easier nowadays, so I really advise you to spend some time on it for your business to progress and succeed. Remember to be mindful of competition but don't compete with them, compete for your customers' attention.

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