In any industry no matter how big or small, there are going to be other companies that you’ll be competing with for awareness, customers and market share.
Competitor research should form a key part of your marketing strategy, alongside your own market research.
This shouldn’t be any different when it comes to exhibitions and tradeshows.
What is a Competitor Analysis?
This is a structural analysis of the competing companies in your industry on a similar level to you. This will help you understand what their strengths and weaknesses are to help benefit your own business.
Identifying these areas, especially their weaknesses, opens the door to opportunities for your business to effectively try and perform well in the areas that they perhaps don’t as much.
Analysing other companies identifies their unique selling point (USP), and how this compares to your own business.
In effect, competition analysis provides you with business development ideas, allowing you to fill the gaps in your marketing and brand visibility.
What Should you Include in your Analysis?
In order to conduct an effective survey, there are a few prime areas to focus on, and these are relatively easy to assess. Here are some of the key areas for analysis:
- Products and services – How are these different to what your company offer, and do the company have any specialities or best-selling products? An important area to consider is pricing and how this relates to your pricing strategy.
- Marketing – What are their marketing and advertising methods? This will help you identify if they’re up to date with the latest marketing trends and whether they have any strengths or weaknesses.
- Customers – Who are their target audience, and is this the same as yours? If they’re aiming their services towards a slightly different demographic, this gives room for opportunity for your company.
- Location – Where is the company based, and are they close to you? If they’re located close to you, this could prove more of a challenge as you’re effectively competing for a similar group of prospects and clients. If you have a physical store, this is particularly crucial as you want to draw in customers to your shop, over others.
- Unique selling point – What makes the company stand out in the crowd? Every brand has a focused area of branding or marketing that’s different to everyone else, so finding this out will show their company strength.
How Can this Help Before an Exhibition?
Having an exhibition stand is all about visually representing what your brand is about, expressing why you’re different from other companies, and why visitors should choose to invest in you.
Your competitors will have similar concepts in mind, in terms of their stand and promotion, so this will help you come to a decision of how you’re going to set up your stand for success and what you’re going to promote to draw attendees to the stand.
Whether you’re intending on having a stand at an event or going along as a visitor, you’ll be able to talk directly with competitors and asked questions based on what you’ve found in your analysis.
Are you going to run competitions? Or maybe you’re looking to offer limited-time offers and discounts for the event only. These are just a couple of the promotional strategies that will make visitors want to come to your stand, over the many others.
Goals and Objectives
It’s important to set goals and achievements that are going to be achieved realistically.
Instead of trying to transform all your weaknesses in one day, at one exhibition, create a strategy in your team of what can be accomplished the best through exhibitions and events.
When comparing your company to others in the industry, highlight your key weaknesses and work on these first.
Segment your strategy into stages to help breakdown how you’re going to best achieve your goals. Your objectives will all be achievable on a different timescale, so determine the time frame for each area and when you’d like to start seeing improvements by.
Considering the geographical aspects of your goals is important as the location of customers, potential marketing events and product manufacturing will all contribute to the outcome.
A financial structure should also be laid out to discuss what effect your strategy is going to have on your budget and how much this is going to increase.
Are you looking to ensure your exhibition stand is one step above the rest? 200m2 would be happy to help! You can contact our team of our experts here.
