Competitive mapping? infallible method [with examples]

In a constantly changing world, all companies — whether large groups, SMEs, VSEs, start-ups or online stores — must adapt to an economic environment and markets that are constantly changing.

Summary

Product and service offerings evolve, as do the players that make up the various markets and business sectors.

Under these conditions, it is essential for business leaders to regularly analyze their positioning in the face of competition to stand out and identify opportunities and niche markets to win new market shares.

Companies have a valuable tool at their disposal to meet all these vital needs: competitive mapping.

What is it about?

Competitive mapping is an essential step in creating your business, which must be included in the broader framework of market research.

In the rest of this article, we will explain everything you need to know about competitive mapping and even provide concrete examples, but let’s start with the definition of the term.

What is Competitive Mapping?

Competitive mapping is a marketing tool that allows the representation of the positioning of companies, brands, products or services in the form of a graph with two axes, a vertical axis and a horizontal axis.

These two axes correspond to two specific criteria that you have chosen and wish to study to highlight the weak and strong points of your company and its direct competitors.

This tool, also called perceptual positioning map, competitive positioning map, positioning mapping, marketing mapping or competitive matrix, is handy for conducting market analysis in the same way as SWOT analysis, and helping you define competitive positioning.

Competitive mapping offers an analysis in the form of a 2-dimensional plan, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of the leading companies within a specific market, including yours.

Here is what this type of representation reveals at a glance:

• What do your company and its competitors have in common
• What your business has, but its competitors don’t.
• What Competitors Have But Your Business Doesn’t
• What neither your company nor your competitors have

Competitive mapping is, above all, a monitoring and anticipation tool.

As the introduction states, markets evolve, competition, consumer expectations, and needs.

Competitive mapping allows you to monitor your market as a whole and anticipate any changes in strategy.

Thus, the realization of a competitive mapping is essential to guide the implementation of your future marketing strategy. This will allow you to identify, for example, less competitive market positions, also called niche markets.

Competitive mapping is also an exciting tool when discussing the product life cycle. Adapting the positioning of a product gives you the possibility of selling it over a more extended period and delaying its exit from the market.

The result of this extended lifespan is better profitability and increased turnover.

What is competitive mapping used for?

Thanks to competitive mapping, a company’s managers can have a schematic overview of the competition in their activity sector based on only two criteria.

You can choose these two criteria or variables, depending on your interests.

The main objective of this approach is to identify commonalities and similarities quickly, but particularities and differences between the leading players in a given market.

This type of simplified representation needs to be revised to obtain an in-depth analysis of the competition. Still, it is a good start for comparing the positions of your main competitors as part of a market study.

Here are some examples of what a competitive mapping analysis can help you do:

• Quickly view the positioning of your direct competitors.
• Compare the positioning of your competitors and better position yourself among the different offers or brands present in your market.
• Visualize the competitive intensity of your market
• Differentiate your direct and indirect competitors
• Reflect on the critical success factors in your market
• Adjust your positioning
• Identify a less competitive market, i.e. a niche market.
• Etc.

How to do a competitive mapping

If you are determined to embark on competitive intelligence using competitive mapping, you must follow several steps.

Here are the five steps of competitive mapping that must be followed:

1. Choose your analysis criteria.
2. Make a list of your competitors.
3. Create your map
4. Fill your card
5. Analyze your chart

Step 1: Choose your analysis criteria

To start, it is essential to select two analysis criteria before starting to draw the outlines of your competitive mapping. It can be the target audience, the price, the quality of the product or service offered, or the target.

You can perform several concurrent mappings with different pairs of criteria. 

Here are some examples of the criteria most often taken into account to carry out a competitive mapping and which you can therefore use for your company:

• The price
• The quality
• The level of the range (low-end, high-end)
• Brand positioning
• The usefulness of the product or service
• The value of the offer
• The target (general public, niche)
• Notoriety
• Market influence (international, national or local)
• Branding
• Customer satisfaction (testimonials, customer reviews, etc.)
• innovation
• The values, missions and commitments (eco-responsibility, French product made in France, etc.)
• The aesthetic aspect, the design

Your company can consider other criteria if they are relevant to its market.

In addition, competitive mapping can also integrate a third criterion, often linked to the turnover or the weight of the companies in terms of sales.

In this case, and as we see in the example below, you can use a trick to make this criterion visible because your chart is supposed to have only two axes.

Step 2: list competitors.

Research and list the direct and indirect competitors in your market who display a precise positioning regarding the two criteria you have chosen.

Use the Google search engine to help you in this research work. In the last part of this article, we will see several other tools and software that can be of the most effective use to you in this research phase but pay attention to obvious and practical solutions, such as social networks and the press.

Step 3: Create your chart

Creating the graph to achieve your competitive mapping is child’s play.

Draw an abscissa, then an ordinate, and assign each of these two axes one of the criteria you have chosen. You can first make your map by hand on a sheet of paper, then use PowerPoint, Word, your tablet or competitive online mapping software capable of generating templates.

As you have already understood, this type of chart is fundamental, and the shape of your graph does not matter. What matters is what you add to it and the resulting analysis.

Step 4: Complete your card

Once your criteria are chosen, and you have drawn your axes, you can finally begin to fill in your competitive mapping.

This phase requires a good knowledge of your market since you will have to assign each of your competitors a higher or lower value regarding the criteria you have chosen.

Then distribute the name of these competing companies and your own inside the four boxes of the graph.

If the vast majority of companies or brands cited are placed in the same box, there is undoubtedly a problem with the criteria you selected or your analysis.

Step 5: Analyze Your Chart

Now that your map is complete, it’s time to move on to the analysis phase and reflect on the results that your competitive mapping reveals. 

Your competitive mapping must reveal the space to be taken on the market and give you clues on the possibilities for differentiation.

It’s up to you to understand how you can distinguish your offer from your competitors and then create the strategies you could implement to achieve your goal.

For example, you may notice that your competitors are positioning themselves on low-cost, low-quality products.

It could be relevant to position your offer at a higher price to satisfy customers who rely on quality. 

If your brand is positioned in the centre of the graph, your products or services are similar to those offered by the competition.

It will then be necessary to consider implementing a marketing strategy that favours one of the two criteria – or even both – to differentiate your brand and develop your notoriety. 

You may notice that one of the four areas on your map is empty.

This can represent either a market for which demand is deficient, a niche market that has yet to be exploited, or an absurd situation that does not need to be, as we will see in the example below. 

Example of competitive mapping:

Here is an example of competitive mapping that incorporates today’s top mobile phone brands.

As indicated, the price and the technological aspect are the two criteria. A third criterion has been included — market share — in the form of bubbles whose size (approximately) varies according to the market share held by the companies cited. 

You can note the absence of a company in the upper left area, which is logically explained here by the fact that there is no offer of low-cost hi-tech laptops. This has yet to have any Sens.

But, in a different case, with other criteria, it could be an untapped niche market that might catch your eye.

Finally, let’s see some tools and software to help you perform better in competitive intelligence.

Tools to complete your competitive mapping 

To complete your competitive mapping work, here is a selection of tools that will allow you to go further, learn more about your main competitors and obtain a high-level competitive analysis. 

• Google Alerts: this is the ideal tool for collecting market research data. Google Alerts allows you to collect information related to the news or the subject of your market research and works based on keywords you define.
• SEMrush: This software tracks your position and that of your competitors on search engines like Google or Bing. It provides a lot of relevant information and allows you to analyze the traffic sources for a web page, observe the positioning of sites and new competitors, target keywords, etc.
•  Wappalyzer: This extension for Firefox allows you to analyze your competitor’s websites to understand how they work and the types of software they use. 
•  SurveyMonkey: here is a tool for creating surveys that are particularly suitable for conducting a quantitative study
•  Knime: Knime is a valuable tool for formatting your market research results.

Conclusion

Competitive mapping is a valuable tool that can help you better identify your direct and indirect competitors and better visualize your position in the market.

Although it only provides an overview of your industry, competitive mapping allows you to see your market from a new angle and find new ideas to develop your business.

It’s an easy-to-use technique that any entrepreneur can benefit from.

However, more than competitive mapping is needed to decide the marketing strategy you need to implement. You may therefore need to carry out other types of more in-depth studies on your market and your competitors.

Finally, it is a practical visual tool that will give you a general vision of your brand’s positioning and that of your competitors.