Creating a Competitive Audit

Competitive Analyses are used in marketing and advertising in order to properly evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of current and feasible competitors. At Finch Brands, my main task has been to complete competitive audits for our clients, in order to show them the high and low points used in competitors marketing and advertising. Basically, competitive audits are used to show what the client should and shouldn’t do, what to emphasize and what to stay away from when revamping their campaign.

The first step in creating a competitive audit is to make a list of competitors: direct competitors and indirect competitors. I usually do this by making a list of all companies with similar products as our client. Then, I consider companies whose products could be substituted for ourclient’s products, and consider them competitors as well. The difference between these two groups of competitors is simple- those that are selling the same product as the clients are considered direct competitors, those that are selling products that could be substituted for our client’s product are considered indirect competitors.

The second step in creating a competitive audit is finding the logo of the company, as well as determining the tagline, the touting and the mission statement of the company. In order to do so, I go on the website of each competitor and search through their various pages in order to find the information. Once found, I insert this information into a PowerPoint presentation. This information is shown within the first few slides, displaying all the competitors and theirinformation in the form of charts. An example is depicted below:

This particular example is one I created just for the purpose of this blog post by using the tactics I learned at Finch. I chose not to use an example from an actual competitive audit I created at Finch Brands in order to protect the private information of Finch Brand’s clients.

The third and final step in creating a competitive audit is moving forward and looking at all sides of each competitor’s presence; for example, their social media presence, their demographic profile, their location, their circulation, a full description of their products and services, and anything else that seems important. As a researcher, you should finish reviewing their website and have a fullunderstanding of exactly who the company is. Once thorough research has been done, all of this information is then included in the PowerPoint. Each competitor is given its own individual slide (or two) within the PowerPoint to portray this information. An example of a slide showing social media presence and an example of a slide showing the rest of the competitor’s presence are depicted below:

Again, these particular examples are ones I created just for the purpose of this blog post by using the tactics I learned at Finch. I chose not to use an example from an actual competitive audit I created at Finch Brands in order to protect the private information of Finch Brand’s clients.

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