Competitor analysis:catch me if you can

Introduction

​Any strategic business task will require you to take management decisions. The better they are, the more sound the future of your business. 

In the crypto market, the quality of decision-making is even more important, as things change several times faster than in traditional markets. Sometimes a single decision can mean the survival or death of a startup. We’ve seen this in the 2022 bear market: the collapses of giants like Terra and Celsius were the result of a handful of wrong decisions. 

To make it easier to make the right decision, you should rely on facts, numbers, and objective market data. One of the ways to obtain such crucial data is analyzing one’s competitors, which we will focus on in a series of articles. 

Competitor analysis is a handy tool for solving various business tasks: entering new markets, strategic planning, product improvements, changing one’s business model, and so forth. 

In one of BDC Consulting’s recent case studies,  we showed how we analyzed a client’s competitors while developing a new strategy for the year ahead. This allowed us to find simple solutions to increase the client’s net profits by 200%. 

The two most common errors that people make when analyzing competitors are:

• picking the wrong competitors;
• selecting the wrong parameters.

To avoid these errors, you should first compile an exhaustive competitor list. We’ll focus on this step in the rest of the article. 

How to identify direct competitors

The first task at hand is to create a list of all possible competitors to make sure you haven’t left anyone out. Next, you’ll be able to select the most relevant projects from the list for deeper analysis. We’ll use crypto mining pools as an example. 

Steps to find competitors:

1.  Analyze the search results for queries that are relevant to your product and industry. You can search manually in Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc., or use SEO analytics services, such as SEMrush or Serpstat. 
   When analyzing SERPs manually, go through at least the top 50 for each query. Take a look not only at your competitors’ websites but also at rankings, articles in the media, forums, and other resources that can contain reTelegram searchady lists. 
   
2.  Check market data on websites like Statista, DappRadar or similar. For most crypto niches, you can find some analysis of the market and the major players — here’s an example for the crypto mining industry from Statista.
   
3.  Analyze the search results in social media, messengers, blogging platforms, forums, and app stores for the highest-volume queries and hashtags. 
   
   Twitter search
   
   Telegram search
   
   Play Store search
   
   LinkedIn search
   
   Go through chats, forum threads, comments to posts, and reviews. Note which brands are mentioned by target users.
    
4.  Check the rankings of your own website and those of the strongest competitors in Similarweb.
   The Similar Sites section will provide you with a list of additional competitors. 
   
5.  Talk to experts, if you can get in touch with any in your niche. They can be found on Linkedin and other social networks.
   
6.  If you already have users or clients, talk to them, too. Ask which of your competitors they have heard about: perhaps they’ve been exposed to competitors’ advertising.

Identifying the competitors of a token or NFT

If your project has a token or an NFT collection, you might need to compile a different list of competitors — those that share the same audience of speculators, NFT collectors, etc. To find them, follow these steps: 

1.  Analyze token listing platforms like Coinmarketcap, CoinGecko, DropsTab or CryptoRank.
   Depending on the analysis objective at hand, either list the largest projects that are similar to yours or those that rank close to yours on various lists. 
   We usually look at larger projects when we want to track their general development path, and those that rank close to our clients in order to see how they develop their tokens under the current market conditions. 
   Most aggregator platforms have category filters (DeFi, Metaverse, Gaming, etc.). Use these if the project fits in one of the categories.
   
2.  To look for NFT projects, you can also use RarityTools, RaritySniper, NFTcalendar and similar services.
   There are also platforms that track collections on specific blockchains, such as HowRare for Solana and NEAR, NFTsoloist for Solana, etc.
    
3.  When planning a token sale, you’ll need to identify those competitors that have recently conducted successful fundraising rounds or are planning to hold one around the same time as your project.
   To find such competitors, use IDO calendars like CryptoRank, ICODrops or IDOdar.
   
4.  When projects prepare to approach investment funds, they often need to analyze competitors from the point of view of investment attractiveness. This involves going through their pitch decks, raised amounts, and other information about investment rounds. 
   It’s easier to look for such projects on venture investment aggregators, such as CrunchBase, PitchBook, DealRoom, InnMind and similar.

What to do next

Your next step should be identifying the parameters based on which you’ll select the competitors for a deeper analysis. These parameters should be defined according to the business task before you. 

For instance, if you plan to enter the Latin American market, you should analyze the competitors already present in that region. 

If your goal is scaling, select those who have already scaled to your target level. 

After you’ve filtered the list based on the parameters, you can be left with dozens of projects — or just a few. Now you can proceed to in-depth analysis, which we’ll discuss in the upcoming articles.