A good competitive feature benchmark report reveals where competition is strong, where it’s weak, where adjusting a feature could offer a competitive advantage, and what customer sentiment is on aspects of your competitors’ products. That said, getting an unbiased, accurate, and comprehensive report is easier said than done. Traditionally, there are three potential routes that businesses take. These are market research reports, consulting services, or an internal sales/marketing team soliciting feedback from customers. Competitive benchmarks should consist of a combination of qualitative and quantitative data. For instance, it’s important to know a certain number of quantitative data points such as sales volume, pricing or promotions. In addition to this, however, you want qualitative data — how happy are customers with certain features? Which features are easiest to sell? Which features are customers most unhappy with? To answer these sorts of questions, you need to speak with stakeholders in key categories. Here’s what these stakeholders would look like for each element of a competitive benchmark:
- High-level market scan: former heads of marketing and/or sales at the market leader company. These people know the market leader’s products, the competitors, the distributors, and the available features on the industry landscape inside-out.
- Precise feature analysis on a specific brand: former heads of product at the competitors or a distributor who distributes the features for the feature benchmark
- Precise feature comparison: large survey of customers for a “voice of customer report” on sentiment of various features.
- Advertising/positioning: former head of advertising or marketing at each competitor, or a senior ad executive from a large agency that worked with the industry leaders.
