{D} 82: My Competitor Map, Part 2
Reverse engineering value propositions to create your landscape
Right before World War II, there was only one brand of travel guide books that mattered: Baedeker’s.
In a time when traveling was difficult, especially across oceans and between nations, and when it was so expensive that a decision to travel was not taken lightly, Baedeker’s brand promise was simple: we are unerringly accurate.
You could always trust that Baedeker’s listings were up to date and, more important, that the painstakingly created maps contained in his books were second to none. Which is why the German army used Baedeker’s maps of Norway when they invaded that country, and Baedeker’s listings of England’s sights to create their list of bombing targets. And here you thought that the greatest violence the travel industry had abetted was gentrification by Starbucks!
The Baedeker brand has since faded from public memory—literally helping Nazis will do that to a company (unless you’re BMW, I guess). But Baedeker’s commitment to mapping the territory remains a powerful lesson, and (weirdly, endearingly) I’ve been thinking about his books while doing a competitive analysis. Not because I want to drop explosives in anybody’s Guinness, but simply because a good competitive analysis is like a map of the land you’re trying to travel through: Where are the easy paths? Where’s the rough going? How can we get from here to there, and what will help us make our way? After all, the more you know about where you’re traveling, the better decisions you can make when you get there.
And so, with that slightly tortured intro-by-way-of-frogsteppers behind us, we can turn to today’s template, which is my competitive analysis and category mapping template, i.e., the thing I use to understand a client’s market and help generate new category ideas.
This is a quick-and-dirty, get-to-know-the-landscape tool. It’s perfect for getting a lay of the land during the beginning stage of an engagement. It can also be used to help a client workshop their positioning. I’ve used this tool recently with a client whose trying to create a new category in the organizational design space, and it builds on the competitor audit tool from last week.
What’s inside:
The competitive audit spreadsheet, for reverse engineering their value propositions
A reverse-engineering guide, for helping you choose the qualities of competing value props you want to compete against
The category map 2x2, and instructions on how to create a 2x2 using qualities from your competitor’s value props
An example audit, maps, and value prop, created from my research into a category within the travel industry
To get my competitive analysis and category mapping template, click the pretty pink button below:
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