Product Manager Foundation: Competitive Product Analysis

When I was a child, I heard the story of horse racing in Tian Ji. Tian Ji listened to Sun Bin's suggestion and used his inferior horse to compete with the superior horse of the other side, losing a game. Then use your superior horse to compete with your opponent's medium horse and win a game; Finally, he used his Chinese horse to compete with his opponent's inferior horse and won another game. Finally, he won the game by two to one. Knowing that his horse is not as good as his opponent's, Tian Ji won the race by strategy, which contains a truth, that is, knowing ourselves and knowing ourselves can win every battle. In the commercial field, "confidant" needs to pay attention to the business model of the product itself, so how to "confidant"? The answer is given in the title-competitive product analysis.

Competitive product analysis seems to be a relatively low-tech job. Even novice products can output experience reports by experiencing competing products, and then compare their own products with competing products in terms of functions and performance, and propose who has the advantage, and then regard the experience reports as cross reports of competing products analysis. However, in fact, an important task of competing products analysis is to find out how to beat competing products and how to compete with competing products. Now that the internet dividend period has passed, almost all products are facing the problem of how to compete with competing products for resources and markets. In the current Red Sea market, it is particularly important to find ways to compete for products.

The first half of this paper is about the method of competing products analysis, and the second half is mainly about how to determine the competition mode between products and competing products after analyzing competing products.

First, how to analyze competing products

The author divides the analysis of competing products into four steps: defining objectives, selecting competing products, collecting information and outputting reports. There are many times in your life when you are doing competitive product analysis. For example, if a friend asks you to recommend a car, you should first ask whether you want to buy an SUV or a car, what you want to do with this car, and what your budget is. In fact, you are defining your goals at this time; Then you will lock in several brands and models, this time you are choosing competing products; Next, we must figure out the configuration of different models. If you are an old hand, the configuration may be in your mind, otherwise you need to go online to collect information, which is equivalent to collecting information. Finally, you will tell your friends which car to recommend and why. At this time, it is equivalent to outputting a competitiveness analysis report, just an oral report.

1. 1 clear objectives

"Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" says that highly effective people should have the habit of "starting from the beginning to the end", which translates into the language of product managers to think with goals. You must know your goals in advance when you do anything, and the same is true of competitive product analysis. For the conventional competitive product analysis, it is nothing more than two goals, "know yourself" or "change yourself". "Know yourself" means to understand competing products and industry trends, and "change yourself" means to learn competing products and modify your own products. There is a saying that "the biggest source of demand for product managers is competing products" is not unreasonable. The function of competing products has passed the test of the market, and the high probability is accurate demand. Therefore, the first thing competing products do is to ensure that they will not fall behind, and the second is to save the process of digging their own needs and then passing the market verification.

Goal 1: Understand the competitive products.

Understanding competing products means understanding the functions of competing products and what is the difference between their own products and competing products. TO B product managers need to contact customers frequently to collect their needs. During the conversation, customers will definitely ask about the functional differences between your product and a product. What's the difference between you two? If you don't know much about the competing products, it will show that your business ability is not strong, which will affect customers' goodwill towards products and companies. Of course, TO C product managers also need to understand competing products and their functions, so as to achieve the goal of "knowing ourselves and knowing ourselves".

Goal 2: Understand industry trends.

Any industry, there will be a great threat-potential competitors, if they just bury themselves in making products and don't understand the overall situation of the industry, are bound to be subverted by the "black swan incident" one day. Knowing the industry trends in advance can make predictions before the Black Swan incident, change the product direction and avoid being suddenly subverted by emerging technologies.

It is also of great significance to understand the industry trends, so that we can know in advance what areas competitors are doing and find new areas where products can break through. For example, at present, there are two domestic authentication products, eID (Network Electronic Identification) and CTID (Network Certificate). If you are the product manager of eID, you find that CTID has landed in short rent's B&B field, from which you can see a market signal-short rent's B&B field is strengthening the control and supervision of residents, which proves that there will be a new market for identity authentication products in the B&B field, and you need to seize the dividend period of this emerging market.

Goal 3: learn competing products.

When it comes to learning competing products, someone will definitely jump out and say that this is just copying others. How does plagiarism make subversive products? As mentioned earlier, "the biggest source of demand for product managers is competing products." The reality is that most of the demand comes from leaders and front-end sales. So where does the leader's demand come from? A large part of the reason may be that we have seen other people's products do this, and the demand put forward is, in the final analysis, excavated from competing products. There is a view in Let Elephants Fly that product innovation does not only come from technological innovation as people think, but also from predecessors. Imitation is not shameful, imitation is the starting point of innovation.

What can I learn from learning competing products? It is not only the functional design and interactive design of products, but also the promotion model, profit model and product planning of competing products. Many times, you can see the planning path of competing products by careful excavation. The planning path of competing products can be analyzed from the patent situation of competing products company and the recruitment situation of the company. For example, Xiaomi's fingerprint identification patent was announced before the launch of the fingerprint identification mobile phone, which means that Xiaomi will soon launch the corresponding products. The specific information collection method of competing products will be written later, and the product manager can choose the appropriate inquiry method of competing products according to the industry situation.

1.2 Select competing products

After doing a good job in the analysis of competing products, we should start to choose competing products. Generally speaking, competing products can be divided into three types: direct competing products, indirect competing products and potential competing products. Direct competing products, such as hungry takeaway platform and Meituan takeaway, have the same user groups and core functions. Indirect competing products, such as take-away platforms and fast food (such as instant noodles), have the same user groups, but on the surface, their functions are different. In fact, the core solution is the same essential requirement; There is also an indirect competing product, which takes up users' time in the same scene and belongs to time competitors. For example, users can watch information flow products, watch videos and play games while taking the subway. Information flow, video and games become competing products at this time. Potential competing products such as AR products and tourism products, some users of tourism products are business people, which solves the face-to-face communication needs of business people and partners, so AR industry can meet the needs of these users in the future, and put all participants in a virtual conference room to realize face-to-face communication, so AR is likely to become a competitor of tourism products in the future.

If the goal of competing product analysis is to learn competing products, the most direct method is to choose direct competing products to "copy". If it is a TO C product, even if it is not competitive with you, it can be used for reference in interaction and page design, which requires the product manager to have a lot of experience in using and analyzing products. If the goal of competitive product analysis is to understand competitive products, then we should choose the analysis object from direct competitive products and indirect competitive products. If the goal of competing products analysis is to understand the industry trend, then it is necessary to analyze direct competing products, indirect competing products and potential competing products as comprehensively as possible in order to draw accurate conclusions.

Direct competition

The target users are the same and the functions are the same.

Indirect competitive product

The first type: the target users are the same, with different functions, but they solve the same essential needs of users.

The first type: the target users are the same, but the functions are different, but the time is in the same scene of competing users.

Potential competitive products

The target users are the same, but their functions are different, but they may solve the same essential needs of users in the future.

1.3 collecting information

Once the competing products that need to be analyzed are defined, the information of competing products should be collected. There are three ways to collect competing information: the first way is to obtain it directly, which is low in cost and high in efficiency, such as logging in to official website and trying competing products to get more and faster information. The second way is to search competitive information through channels, which is slightly inefficient, such as obtaining information through news reports. The third is to do it yourself. There is no information you need to get, so you need to sort it out yourself, such as collecting information through user interviews and partner exchanges.

Direct acquisition

Go directly to official website, Weibo, WeChat official account and other channels where you can compete for products to inquire about official product information, industry trends, landing areas, etc. For example, for identity authentication products, you can go directly to the official WeChat accounts of eID and CTID or the official WeChat accounts of enterprises specializing in eID and CTID products to obtain information and understand the industry trends. There is also a necessary link in the analysis of competing products, which is to try out competing products and understand the interaction and functional information of competing products.

Summary of channels for directly obtaining competing products information: official website, official Weibo, official WeChat account, advertisement, introduction, release, white paper and competing products trial.

Search acquisition

Searching for information about competing products is a little more troublesome. We collect and sort out the fragmentation information of competing products from the Internet. For example, identity authentication products can go to the vertical community in the industry-mobile payment network to inquire about some information and news reports. Another easily overlooked collection method is to go to Baidu Index, Google Trends and other websites to inquire about users' attention in this field, key product concerns and other information.

For example, eID (Network Electronic Identification) and CTID (Network Certificate) are displayed on Baidu Index, and eID's attention index has always taken precedence over CTID, which shows that eID occupies more users' cognition. If you look closely, you will find that the search volume of CTID in Guangdong in the past month is not much different from that of Eid al-Fitr. If you are interested, you can focus on asking whether CTID has set up a new company or a new project in Guangdong.

The way to search competing information can also get some suggestions by looking at the patents of competing companies. As mentioned above, Xiaomi's fingerprint identification patent was announced before the launch of fingerprint identification mobile phone, which means that Xiaomi will launch corresponding products soon. It is really time-consuming to collect information about competing products like patents, and the effect is not necessarily so direct. Simply put, it is inefficient, and there is no other way to be efficient. However, if you want to output a competitive and in-depth technical product analysis report, I suggest you don't be afraid of trouble.

The channels for searching competitive information are summarized as follows: news reports, Weibo, executives of an enterprise, recruitment information, Baidu index (users pay attention to product trends), taobao index (users' shopping trends), Google trends (industry development trends, website traffic), Youku index (video marketing trends), user forums, company financial reports, financing and acquisitions, and competing patents.

do-it-yourself

Many times, the information you want to get about competing products can't be collected online at all. At this time, you need to organize yourself, which is a bit equivalent to writing an information article yourself. For example, TO B products can pretend to be customers, call the customer service phone of competing products companies and ask questions they want to know (slightly immoral); For immature products, you can decompile each other's apk files to see what technology is used in competing products (this is beyond the scope of the product manager's work).

Summarize the channels of obtaining competing products information: field trip, user interview, communication with colleagues in different departments of the company, questionnaire survey, customer service, communication with competing products partners and decompilation.

1.4 output report

The last step of competing product analysis is to output competing product analysis report, not experience report. This paper lists the functional comparison between the products and competing products, the advantages and disadvantages of the products, and more importantly, talks about the product manager's own ideas and puts forward the product strategy and action plan. The competitive product analysis report can be completed from the following analysis dimensions:

Business dimension: user segmentation, satisfied demand, product function, usage scenario, promotion model, profit model, product advantage, etc.

User dimensions: user experience, product packaging, performance, price, safety, etc.

Macro dimensions: technical situation, development situation, team background, planning situation, etc.

Another important part of competing product analysis report is to put forward product strategy and action plan. There are only two plans of action. First, if we are in the leading position, how can we maintain our current leading position? Second, if we are in a backward position, how can we catch up with or even surpass the leaders? The specific methods of this part can refer to the previous article "How to break through the shackles of giants with small products" and will continue to be shared in the future. Welcome to subscribe to WeChat official account (product toolbox).