Who Are Your Competitors Really Trying to Help? Weekly Winning Strategies

Who Are Your Competitors Really Trying to Help? Weekly Winning Strategies
To improve your competitive intelligence, ask this key, often overlooked question. Who are your competitors really trying to help?

“Don’t find customers for your products, find products for your customers.”

— Seth Godin

In competitive analysis, businesses focus on what competitors are doing. This includes their pricing, product features, and campaigns. They don’t understand why or for whom. But, the truth is, their target audience drives every action your competitor takes. They are trying to solve a problem for that audience. You’ll miss the bigger picture if you don’t identify who they’re targeting and what problems they’re solving.

Here’s how to dig deeper and get more specific:

Step 1: Identify Their Target Audience
Start by asking yourself: Who is this competitor focusing on? Not just broadly, like “small businesses” or “healthcare providers.” But at a more granular level. Look for signals in their:

Messaging and Positioning
Review their website, taglines, and marketing materials. Pay attention to language that hints at their ideal customer. Are they speaking to enterprise decision-makers? Individual consumers? Small business owners?
Your competitor’s tagline is “Empowering small business owners to scale,”? They are clearly targeting SMBs, not mid-market or enterprise clients. Simple example, but the clues for most business
Case Studies and Testimonials
These are gold mines for understanding an audience. Who are they highlighting in their success stories? If all their testimonials are from e-commerce companies with $1M—$5M in revenue, that’s likely their sweet spot.
Partnerships and Collaborations
Competitors’ partnerships can provide clues about their target customers. Are they partnering with accounting software like QuickBooks? If so, they’re likely targeting small businesses rather than large enterprises.
Social Media Engagement
Scroll through the comments on their social media posts. What kinds of questions are people asking? Who is engaging with their content? This is a direct window into the demographic they’re attracting.

Use these clues to understand your competitor’s ideal customer better.

Step 2: Understand What Problems They’re Solving
Once you know who your competitors are targeting, the next question is:

What problem are they solving for this audience?

Here’s how to figure it out:

Analyse Their Features and Offerings
Dive into their product or service. What’s the primary value proposition? Is it saving time, cutting costs, increasing revenue, or something else? Break their offering down to its core benefits to understand the problems they aim to solve.
They offer “one-click reporting for busy accountants,”. Then their audience likely struggles with time-consuming manual reporting.
Study Their Marketing Campaigns
Pay attention to the pain points highlighted in their ads, landing pages, and email campaigns. Are they emphasising convenience, speed, affordability, or something else? Those messages are crafted to address their audience’s specific frustrations.

Look at Pricing and Packaging
A competitor’s pricing strategy often reflects the problem it is solving. If its entry-level price is $99/month, it is likely targeting SMBs, who value affordability over advanced features.

Research Their Customer Reviews
Customer reviews reveal what competitors are solving and where they’re falling short. Look for recurring themes in reviews. Multiple customers praise their ability to “streamline team collaboration,”? Maybe you’ve found a key problem they’re solving.

Step 3: What Are They Doing to Solve It?
So you know who they are helping and the problems they solve. Now, let’s see how they’re delivering value. This is where you analyse their strategies and execution:

Features and Tools
Break down their product or service into its components. What specific tools, features, or methods are they offering to solve their audience’s problem? If your competitor’s audience is e-commerce brands, they are struggling with shipping. Their solution may include integrations with third-party logistics. Or real-time tracking, or AI inventory management.

Customer Experience
Examine how your competitors interact with their customers at every touchpoint. Are they offering personalised onboarding, proactive customer support, or free resources? These can be significant parts of their problem-solving strategy.

Content Strategy
Study their blog posts, webinars, podcasts, and social media content. What educational or inspirational value are they providing to their audience? By publishing articles like “10 Ways to Cut Costs as a Small Business,” they aim to help with cost management.

Partnerships and Ecosystem
Some competitors solve customer problems by joining a broader ecosystem. For example, a SaaS-targeting marketing team might partner with CRM or analytics platforms to offer seamless integrations.

Unique Differentiators
Look for what makes them stand out. Are they solving the problem in a way that’s faster, cheaper, or more effective than others? Their USPs will offer insight into how they’re positioning themselves in the market.

The Competitive Advantage of Knowing the “Who” and “How”
Here’s why this level of specificity matters:

You Identify Gaps
By studying your competitors, you can spot gaps they leave. You can see who they target and how they solve their problems. Maybe they’re ignoring a segment of the market, or maybe their solution doesn’t fully solve the pain point.

You Differentiate Yourself
Knowing your competitors’ target audience and methods lets you position your offering to stand out. If they’re focused on affordability, you might focus on premium quality. If they’re solving for efficiency, you might solve for innovation.

You Avoid Overlaps
Being specific avoids wasting time. It prevents competing for the same audience in the same way. Instead, you can carve out a unique niche where your business has the strongest advantage.

Example: Mapping the “Who” and “How”
You’re competing with a project management software company like Asana. After analysis, you identify the following:

Who They’re Helping
Small to mid-sized tech startup teams. They struggle to organise workflows across departments.

What Problems They’re Solving
They simplify task management, cut email overload, and boost team collaboration.

How They’re Solving It:
Offering an intuitive drag-and-drop task management tool.
Providing integrations with Slack and Google Drive to reduce workflow friction.
Pricing their product affordably, starting at $10/user/month.
With this insight, you could carve out a different position by focusing on:

Large enterprises struggle with complex workflows. They need features like advanced reporting and department-level permissions.
A niche market: marketing agencies. Create templates and tools for their needs.
Identify your competitors’ clients and their problems. Then, find a way to outmanoeuvre them in the market.

Final Thought: Stop Guessing, Start Observing
In competitive analysis, specificity applies to your strategy and to knowing your competition. Don’t stop at surface-level questions like “What are they doing?” Go deeper.

Who are they doing it for?
What pain points are they addressing?
How are they delivering value?
The better you know your competitors, the better you can differentiate your offering. It’s not about copying but gaining insight into the gaps, opportunities, and angles they’re missing. Winning isn’t about pleasing everyone. It’s about being the perfect solution for the right people.

Let’s talk…

https://www.octopusintelligence.com/who-are-your-competitors-really-trying-to-help/