Keeping track of your competition is an important part of making sure your marketing messages clearly differentiate your company and its products in the marketplace. There used to be a saying in the book business that "every book was unique" and therefore, there was no competition. But with today's exploding number of titles and services offered to libraries and schools, this axiom is outdated.

What are the key elements of a competitive study and how can you use this information to position yourself in the market? Here's a beginning list of things to look for.

Financial Strength

You know how much marketing investment your company is making in gaining product recognition and market share. Analyzing the financial strength of your competitors will give you an idea of how strong they are and how they might be able to react to your marketing strategies. Find out how they are financed. Find out if they are a small part of a large company or a start-up looking for their next round of investment. Investigate their revenues and profits. Are they able to fund their cash flow from current operations? Are they about to go IPO to raise public capital? If so, how are they going to use the money?

Knowing the financial strength of your competition can enable you to make certain assumptions about their future behavior. For instance, will they be able to support a large or small sales force. Can they sustain a large or small advertising program. Can they afford to attend regional or just national exhibits. Will they be concentrating in local or national markets. Once you make these assumptions, you can adjust your own marketing strategy to compete in their weakest areas.

You can also use this information to raise questions and doubts about your competitor when you are talking with potential customers. For instance, "Are you sure you want to tie your school or library to a company that might not be around in 5 years?" or "Their product is fine today, but are they going to have the resources to make necessary changes to keep with future technological innovation?"

Company Ownership

Who owns and is driving the company is another important element in competitive analysis. Understanding their background and the backgrounds of the key executives is key to anticipating how they will execute their mission statement. Many companies in the school and library market are headed by people from other industry backgrounds. How well will they understand the market needs? How quickly will they adjust to change? What connections to they have to the market?

Besides reviewing the backgrounds of the executives, also take a look at their board members and advisory boards. These are also people who can influence the future of the company. Many educational companies have ex-superintendents on their boards. This is a key to where the company will be concentrating their sales and marketing efforts. And, if these markets are important to your company as well, you might think about how your company could co-op the assistance from other influential people in this market.

Venture Capital Investors

A relatively new player in the education and library markets are the venture capital groups who are funding many start-ups. But these groups also have investments in other companies as well. And, they can leverage one investment with another by helping the companies provide synergies together. These synergies might be marketing partnerships, technology sharing, or simply introductions to key executives within the industry. Understanding the web of relationships can enable you to decide who might be "good partners" and who might be "unacceptable" partners.

Partnerships

In today's new economy, companies are developing relationships like never before. There is a feeling in the marketplace that no company can do it all alone anymore. But, partnerships come and go and I've heard this more than once "The reason companies are partnering is to have an excuse to send out a press release and get media attention." Be that as it may, the array of announced partnerships over the past couple of years is astounding.

In fact, if you look carefully at the top 20 educational companies, you'll find they are all related to each other in one way or another. Company A is partnering with Company B who is partnering with Company C who has a relationship with Company A.

What does this tell you? It helps you understand the circle of information and support that your competitors can tap into. And, it helps you understand which companies are ripe for partnering with your company because their competitor partnered with your competitor. The web of partnership relationships is the key to understanding the competitive landscape.

Product & Services Features and Benefits

While this one is obvious, I think its one that needs more emphasis than ever before. Companies are all claiming to be the "best solution" and they are all claiming to "have everything you need". A careful look at exactly what features a product or service offers is crucial to positioning yours effectively. Because your sales and marketing messages must hone in on the weaknesses in comparisons with your products and services.

Take for instance, a claim that says "Thousands of lesson plans correlated to standards" Sounds good but a deeper look into the claim might show that the lesson plans are written poorly, they don't cover the entire K-12 grade levels, 80% of them are in secondary science and they only correlate to national standards and not state or subject level standards. This is the type of specific information you need to help prospects choose your company over the competition.

Sales Force and Customer Service

While some companies sell strictly through mail order and exhibits, most companies have some face-to-face presence in the library and school market. Knowing the number and location of your competitor's sales force is an indication of where they are focusing their marketing efforts. Look into the background of the sales people. Are they former teachers or librarians? Look at the scope of their territories. Are they trying to cover half the country or just one particular district. Are they seasoned sales people with existing contacts in the market or have they just been hired and need training. Compare your sales force with your competitors. How do you stack up? How can you focus them to call on a prospect the day after they have been called upon by your competitor?

Using competitive analysis as the backbone of your marketing strategy is time consuming but an important step in positioning your company for success. Don't try to compete with every company in your niche. Pick the strongest 2-3 companies and develop your strategies around them. The rest either won't be around to worry about or will continue to be minor players in the market.

Competitive analysis can be a powerful tool for establishing your marketing strategies. And, with this fast moving market, you need to re-assess your competitors on an ongoing basis.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
This tip was written by Carol Ann Waugh, President of Xcellent Marketing, a marketing and new business development firm specializing in the education and library markets. Xcellent Marketing offers a variety of marketing services to help publishers increase their sales and profits from identifying new markets, providing critiques of web sites and marketing communications such as direct mail, catalogs, space ads, etc., as well as developing effective marketing plans. Carol can be reached at cwaugh@xcellentmarketing.com or by calling (303) 388-5215.