research – Max's Two Cents

competitive intelligence tools, market research

Best Tools For Competitive Intelligence

2018-07-032021-01-08competitive intelligence, market-research, marketing, product marketing, research, strategy2 Comments

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could always be on top of what your competition is up to without making this your full-time job?

There are many online tools available in 2018 that can help you achieve exactly that.

For the purposes of this post, I will omit all the context about competitive intelligence — what it is, why it’s important, how to do it systematically, and how to make it actionable. Instead, I will simply list useful tools and apps and provide brief descriptions.

Let’s dive right in!

Listen to Their Customers

B2B software companies: Capterra and G2Crowd reviews
E-commerce companies: Amazon reviews and Google Shopping reviews
Mobile apps: reviews on iTunes and on Google Play marketplaces
Reviews on social media platforms: read comments on ProductHunt, search Twitter for the responses to the company, look at comments on their Facebook page, and search for “company name Reddit”
Other categories: try searching directly for “company name reviews” or “product category reviews”

Listen to Their Employees

Do people enjoy working there or are they leaving in droves — Glassdoor.com
See how their headcount has been growing over time on LinkedIn

Review Their Funding and Investors

Crunchbase.com
For startups: AngelList

See Whom They Are Hiring And Where

Automatically Receive News About Your Competitors

Google Alerts

Stay on Top of Company Announcements

Subscribe to their email newsletter(s)
Subscribe to their blogs and press releases

Detailed Analysis

Watch, read, or listen to interviews with their CEOs or key executives.
If your competitors are public, review their S-10, 10-Q or 10-K reports on sec.gov. Insights to expect: financial metrics, market intelligence, future plans, etc.
“Mystery shopping”. Sign up for product trials or product demos to learn more about their products. Visit their stores and talk to their salespeople.
Do your own qualitative research. Not only talk to your customers but to customers of competing products too — so that you could learn about their strengths and weaknesses.

Other Tools

Review their traffic — Similarweb
Review company profiles — Owler
Understand their content strategy — BuzzSumo
Review their SEO rankings and PPC strategy — SpyFu
Get notified when their website is updated — Visualping

Consider Purchasing Research Reports

Browse reports published by these companies:

McKinsey & Company
Boston Consulting Group
Bain & Company
Gartner, Inc., especially their Magic Quadrant reports
Forrester, especially their Wave reports
IDC

Obvious But Sometimes Overlooked

Corporate website and blog.
Social media: LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Leverage Your Colleagues

Create a slack channel for competitive intelligence. Post big news and encourage all customer-facing teams to do the same, so nothing important goes unnoticed.

Let me know if I left anything out!

Monthly Newsletter: Issue 3

2018-03-292023-03-09AI, books, email-marketing, feedback, financial models, growth, happiness, leadership, management, marketing, music, performance management, product management, research, science, space, startups, technology, unit economics, world3 Comments

This is an issue of my monthly newsletter. Main topics: technology, startups, business growth, and marketing. See other issues on my blog or subscribe. ~Max

Now, get a cup of coffee and enjoy!

Technology and Startups

Latest YC Batch: 64 Startups. (Techcrunch)
Crypto Canon. A list of crypto learning resources. (A16z)
A visualization of how self-driving cars see the world. (Waymo on Medium)
Live video of the Falcon Heavy launch. This was just epic and worth a re-watch. (SpaceX)
B2B Buying Guide – AI, HR, legal, finance, marketing, productivity, and other products. (Y Combinator)
Cora. The electric aircraft company that Larry Page invested in unveiled its first “self-piloting” product.
The Building Blocks of Interpretability – visualization of image recognition machine learning algorithms. (Distill)
Here Come the Fake Videos, Too. It gets increasingly easy to develop fake videos using machine learning. (NYT)
YouTube, the Great Radicalizer. YouTube’s recommendations might lead you to increasingly radical content – no matter the topic. (NYT, Zeynep Tufekci)
10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2018. Sidewalk Labs’ “sensing city” and “zero-knowledge” proofs facilitated by Zcash cryptocurrency are interesting. (TechnologyReview)

Growth and Marketing

What 10 Studies Say About The Best Time To Send Email. Best options: Tue at 10 am, Thu at 8 pm, Wed at 2 pm, Tue at 6 am, and Thu at 10 am.
Analysis of the Dropbox financial model based on the S-1 filing. 1.1B revenue; 35% YoY; 7.97 multiple; 67% gross margin; -0.1% net income margin; 2% Free–>Paid conversion; 93% of customers are self-serve. (Tom Tunguz, VC)
Lessons from Spotify. Atypically for tech, Spotify’s marginal cost is not zero as it pays royalties. Since it’s hard to negotiate better rates with the music industry, Spotify will either need to tightly control operational costs or cut out the labels altogether – not a likely option. (Stratechery)

How to Develop and Validate a Value Proposition (Product Positioning)

2018-01-242023-02-26branding, marketing, positioning, product management, product marketing, product-market fit, research, strategy, value proposition2 Comments

If I were to ask you these questions right now, would you be able to answer them?

What does your company do?
What product does your company sell, and how is it different from the competition?
Who is this product for?

Seriously, stop reading right now and try to answer these questions aloud or in your head.

Can you answer these questions in 1-3 sentences and in a clear way that wouldn’t invite follow-up questions from an average customer?

Can everyone in your organization?

What is a Value Proposition?

A value proposition is simply a way to connect a product offering with customer needs in a clear way.

It should resonate with customers and would motivate them to try or buy your product. Essentially, the value proposition is synonymous with the unique selling proposition and product positioning.

In order to find its product-market fit, startups need to come up with value proposition statements for its products. Initially, they begin with a hypothesis or a simple guess.

This hypothesis then needs to be validated with customers and refined as the product evolves and as the company acquires more knowledge about the market and customers.

A validated value proposition statement is the ultimate outcome of finding the product-market fit. This statement should encapsulate the key insights you’ve gathered about customers, as well as unique product strengths.

Do You Need One?

If you don’t have one, you’re shooting in the dark. If you have one but it’s not validated, you might be deluding yourself.

Here are some practical benefits of developing a value proposition: