Product managers would like their products to succeed. One of the biggest challenges we have to face is that the world is brimming with rivals – businesses that offer products that solve the exact problem that our product’s definition addresses. To ensure that our product succeeds, it will be necessary to figure out how to beat all of the competition.
Step 1: Examine Your Competitors
Before a manager of a product is equipped to handle the threat from competitors to their product, it is essential to do some research on your competitors. This is an important step that should be listed on the resume of every product manager since it allows you to develop a successful plan to deal with them.
There are three aspects of each competitor that you’ll need to consider:
Objectives: The business you are competing with has a reason. It’s essential to be able to discover the cause. Did they create this product to improve their bottom line or gain a more significant part of their market, or even to bring customers to their brand in order to make them purchase other products?
Strengths: Every business has a knack for doing things. You must evaluate your competitors against your business and other companies in the market. What can they do better than everyone else? In fact, what are they doing better than others? What percentage of the market do they control currently?
Reactions: When you begin to respond to your competitors, How will they choose to react? The options range from doing nothing, just responding to specific competitors, or going after you with both hands blazing. Make sure you have the correct answer before you decide to take any action.
Step 2: Gather Information About Your Competitors
Finding out about your competitors is a difficult task to complete. It is possible to violate a legal or ethical limit if you’re not vigilant. Use only public sources and avoid suspicious sources.
The website of your competition is an excellent place to begin. Contact your sales team to find out what they are aware of. The trade associations and the traditional suppliers could also offer plenty of helpful information. Your company might have former employees who were employed by you, and so long as you are legal, they could give you some valuable information.
Step #3: Attack!
After you’ve completed your research and you’ve done your homework, put on your combat gear and enter the fight. You shouldn’t allow a competitor to show up and steal market share from you. You’ll have to take on them head-on and tell them that you’ll fight for the existing customers you have and are prepared to fight to win new customers. Here are nine attack strategies to use:
Promote and Boost Ads When a new competition appears, it’s the perfect time to tell your customers base that you’re still in business and that it is your most effective product on the market. Make sure your product is actually superior!
Reduce Your Cost A little cautious regarding this option; however, in certain situations, it could be a good idea. If your competition’s primary selling point is their price and you can lower your prices, you’ll be able to decrease the attractiveness of their item. Be sure that it will actually affect the buying habits of customers prior to making the change.
Make Cheaper Products If your most popular product isn’t able to be reduced to be competitive with the latest competitor, then you might need to develop an entirely new product that has been specifically designed to be sold at a lower cost in order to be competitive with your competition.
Make More Expensive Products Based on the needs of your customers and the market you are in, making a premium product that is clearly superior to the competition is a method to divert attention from them and emphasize the weaknesses that their offering has.
Increase Variety of Products If your competitors are limited to a couple of types of products, consider the creation of a range of other models or variants of your product that enable customers to receive precisely what they require. If you are able, you could go one step further by allowing customers to personalize the product to suit the specific requirements of their customers.
Innovate: Create features or add functionality for your service that your competitor has not got in order to differentiate your product from the rest. The most valuable things to add are the things you know you will be challenging to incorporate into the product.
Reduce Costs Find ways to lower the cost of developing packaging, marketing, and sustaining your product. Any funds you get rid of here can be utilized in other strategies to boost your business more effectively.
Enhance Customer Service Customers may only purchase your product once, but they could contact your customer service team several times. Investing in properly-trained and effective customer service will make the product you sell stand out among the other products.
Change Distribution: Once the client has made the decision to purchase your product, you have to make it available to them. Consider how you can accomplish this, and decide whether you could do it more quickly, less expensively, or in any other way that the competition isn’t able to match.
What does this mean for What Does This Mean For
The fact that competition is part of life for managers of products. How to manage it should be an element of every product manager’s job description. This means that we have been able to recognize how to respond to the threat of competition whenever it arises. In addition, we must be able to defend ourselves to protect both our market share as well as our clients, both our current and future ones.
The first thing the product manager must do whenever a new competitor comes up is to look at the competition. It is essential to know the goals, as well as their strengths and responses, will be. After that, you must gather data about the subject. Be sure to are doing this in a professional manner. In the end, you have to fight back. There are numerous methods to strike back, and you’ll need to decide the best option for your audience and your product.
Competitors are the norm in the world of product management. The good thing is we do not need to sit by and watch as the competition eats away our market share and customers. Instead, we should be able to intelligently assess the situation, and we can take action to counter it. Have fun beating your competition!
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