I want to keep writing about helpful topics. Today we continue the Money Talk series with a blog on what a competitive analysis is. At the end, I have linked a few articles that will go into more detail than I did. They each bring up something different, while otherwise being mostly repetitive. A few offer case studies and examples and one link will give you a template.
This Money Talk series is meant to help us calibrate our language set to achieve greater success when dealing with larger money providers. A lot of us still need that artist sugar daddy money, it’s helpful to say things like here’s my competitive analysis.
The really quick definition is that it’s a report that highlights where you stand against your competition. This applies to commercial art (I hear you hobbyists) as much as it does for retail products.
Why do I need a competitive analysis?
A competitive analysis is a big research project. You are going to have to perform the following exercises:
Define your competitors
Define your market segment
Map out competitor marketing tactics (trying to determine strategy)
Identify market reaction
Determine relevant technology
Map out your strengths and weaknesses being real honest
Figure out what you need to do in order to be competitive
No matter what you do in life, other people are trying to do the same thing. Or at least something similar. People are creating content, products and services that exist within finite populations. Some make a lot more money off their efforts than others do.
Conducting a competitive analysis is an exercise in legal plagiarism. You are going to write down what everyone else is doing. Then you are going to steal the best parts that make sense for you. Don’t do that in school though, you’ll get in trouble for it.
I am not saying you should copy/paste. You should go look at 20 Instagram accounts and see which ones get the best performance. See who has the highest engagement and which posts generate the most traction. Then emulate that in your own style.
If you make clothing and 15 out of 20 stores have their websites laid out in a certain way. Then you see those 15 stores get way more web traffic than the other 5. It’s probably a good idea to copy that layout, creativity be damned.
What’s really important is you will save a lot of time seeing how other people win and lose.
What is a competitor?
Competitor is a super vague term. We’ll break it down in a few ways using the lens of Montreal Rapper. The first step in understanding competitors is to think about your markets. Simply put, it’s those who are competing for the same market you are.
I see my target market as middle class 18-26 year olds with college level education. My direct competitors would be other rappers that are trying to reach that same group of people.
Any rapper that could take a slot allocated to someone with my brand/sound profile would be a direct competitor. My job is to outperform that person at all costs. That is if I want to get booked at nicer gigs with better bags. There may be a limit on how many weirdo pickle rappers there are.
King K LV would represent an indirect competitor. We’re both artists in the city trying to get attention. We both may perform similar strategies to get that attention. Given the man got RVLR MAGZ on Sunday Spitters, I should be paying attention to what he does.
While many may be a fan of myself and King K LV, and we both may share the same stage here and there, there is no direct competition between him and I. We are very much catering to different groups of people. Also I love his music and it’s a privilege to share stages with him. He’s the kind of person I should be taking notes off of.
When you are mapping out competitors you should find 3-5 that are extremely similar to you (honestly I need to do some research). Then find yourself another 3-5 that fill that indirect slot. Finally, take it one step further.
Think about your fans. Once you know what your market is, do some Googles and find out what else they like. Go pick a bunch of competitors that are outside the sphere of what you do. Follow some fashion designers or painters or jewellery stores or something. The idea is to map out things that are not commonly done within your industry but appeal to the demographics you are trying to reach. So you can plagiarize the idea and make some bank.
Lately I have been blessed to be learning more about food. Everyone likes food. I can use what I see there in music.
What should you research?
Everything you can think of. Go check out their website. See how they post on social media. How often do they post on social media?
Do they have merch? How do they market their merchandise? Are their visuals using big crews and effects or are they doing that Holden-style cell phone video?
You need to check out the music (or products/art/service/etc) they make. Go consume a lot of it. See what is out there. Pay attention to the numbers, try and figure out why certain posts/songs/brands outperform other people. Instead of being mad at pop music, go ask people why they like it.
Listening to girls has had me reshape my entire approach to music. The early part of my career was very focused on male approval. Lately when I show my songs to women (the unreleased ones), they react really well. To achieve that goal, I had to pay attention to what women were listening to. Then I had to go see what those artists were doing differently than me.
You should look at the fashion. The web assets. Find out who their fans listen to. Go study those artists. Performing this kind of exercise on an ongoing basis will keep you in the know. It will also help you differentiate from what’s out there while trend hopping where appropriate.
Here’s the unfortunate part
While tools like ChatGPT can summarize everything and help you with these tasks. You still need to go through the foundational work. You need to go stare at 1000 Instagram accounts, looking for your competitors.
It’s pretty long and time consuming work. It’s a lot of trial and error to discover what actually matters to you. There are a lot of tools out there to facilitate your work. You can use social media spy machines to browse what people are searching for and get reports. Over time you get quicker with it because you can identify good performance.
The bad side is until you understand how to train your ChatGPT bot, you have to read all those comments yourself. To vet the data. ChatGPT is very much a garbage in-garbage out kind of tool.
To end this off I wanted to be frank it’s a lot of researching what is publicly available information.
One time someone paid me to look into data to open a cafe in St Henri. I had to find city reports on demographic breakdowns. I had to look into other establishments and all kinds of market research in order to answer a template’s questions. It took a really long time to find that information without any formal training.
Maybe you need to hire someone else to do the work for you, but if you want to get that bigger money, you need to use that money talk. Dropping a proper competitive analysis on them will help you make that bank.
Oh this goes hand in hand with a SWOT analysis.
Live Long and Prosper Everyone
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