This post was first published on my newsletter, Delightful

Right before World War II, there was only one brand of travel guide books that mattered: Baedeker’s.

In a time when traveling was difficult, especially across oceans and between nations, and when it was so expensive that a decision to travel was not taken lightly, Baedeker’s brand promise was simple: we are unerringly accurate.

You could always trust that Baedeker’s listings were up to date and, more important, that the painstakingly created maps contained in his books were second to none. Which is why the German army used Baedeker’s maps of Norway when they invaded that country, and Baedeker’s listings of England’s sights to create their list of bombing targets. And here you thought that the greatest violence the travel industry had abetted was gentrification by Starbucks!

The Baedeker brand has since faded from public memory—literally helping Nazis will do that to a company (unless you’re BMW, I guess). But Baedeker’s commitment to mapping the territory remains a powerful lesson, and (weirdly, endearingly) I’ve been thinking about his books while doing a competitive analysis. Not because I want to drop explosives in anybody’s Guinness, but simply because a good competitive analysis is like a map of the land you’re trying to travel through: Where are the easy paths? Where’s the rough going? How can we get from here to there, and what will help us make our way? After all, the more you know about where you’re traveling, the better decisions you can make when you get there.

And so, with that slightly tortured intro-by-way-of-frogsteppers behind us, we can turn to today’s template, which is my competitive analysis and category mapping template, i.e., the thing I use to understand a client’s market and help generate new category ideas.

This is a quick-and-dirty, get-to-know-the-landscape tool. It’s perfect for getting a lay of the land during the beginning stage of an engagement. It can also be used to help a client workshop their positioning. I’ve used this tool recently with a client whose trying to create a new category in the organizational design space, and it builds on the competitor audit tool from last week.

What’s inside:

1. The competitive audit spreadsheet, for reverse engineering their value propositions
2. A reverse-engineering guide, for helping you choose the qualities of competing value props you want to compete against
3. The category map 2x2, and instructions on how to create a 2x2 using qualities from your competitor’s value props
4. An example audit, maps, and value prop, created from my research into a category within the travel industry

To get my competitive analysis and category mapping template, click the pretty pink button below:

Get the template

But before you dive in, let me bend your ear about how the tool works.

This is reverse engineering tool. It begins by analyzing competitive value props, then helping you create your own. It’s a great way to begin defining yourself in opposition to an other, or others. Consider it a way to come in the side door, so to speak, of brand positioning. Definition by opposition.

However, there are times in strategy work when it’s better to go in the front door—that is, by starting with who your brand is, and creating your value proposition from first principles. In that case, I recommend buying Strategyzer’s book Value Proposition Design, or use my interactive tool based on their work. You can always come back to this competitive analysis tool afterwards.

Ok, with that out of the way, let me tell you a little bit more about each component in the competitive analysis and category mapping template:

1. Competitive audit spreadsheet
   A fill-in-the-cell for analyzing competitors, this is a spreadsheet designed to help you track and create competitive value propositions (it is not a product feature tracker). How does it help you track and create value props? It asks the right questions, such as: who’s the target customer? What is their job to be done? What gain (benefit) are they looking for? And etc. Once you fill out the cells for a competitor, you’ll be able to create a quick-n-dirty value prop for them. And that, dear friend, will allow you to begin comparing and contrasting competitors.
   
   Here’s the list of qualities the spreadsheet tracks:
   
   —Products and Services
   —Customer Segment
   —Job to be Done
   —Benefit 1 (gain to achieve)
   —Benefit 2 (pain to avoid)
   
2. Reverse-engineering tool
   But what’s a competitive audit without a way to derive insights? This part of the tool guides you on how to pick and choose qualities of a value proposition to compete against. That’s the value of structuring your competitors’ value props: when you write them with the exact same format, it becomes easy to see how and why they’re competing as they do (and find a weak point).
   
   For example, you might look at the competing value props and ask yourself:
   
   —Does my brand offer a different type of product or service?
   —Am I targeting the same customer segment?
   —Do my target customers have the same job to be done?
   —Are my customers looking to gain the same benefits, or avoid the same pains?
   
   Your answers to those questions will reveal nuances in your position. Maybe there’s a slight difference in the customer segment, or the job to be done. How you describe those differences will reveal qualities, which we’ll use in the next component (there’s a good example of this process in the tool itself).
3. Category Map 2x2
   What’s a good competitive landscape without a matrix? This part of the tool guides you in creating a quadrant diagram and placing your competitors within. This 2x2 will allow you to easily communicate a positioning hypothesis to your team.

And that’s it!

I hope this tool is useful to you!

A quick reminder: as always, what matters when you’re analyzing a problem (any problem!) is less the tool you use and more the process of thinking about the problem, and then being consistent with that process. I wouldn’t expect to use a tool once, debut it in a meeting, and then think that everything’s going to change. Nothing is going to change.

Rather, the benefit of using a tool is structured thinking.

In my experience, the more structured your analysis is, the easier it is to make small adjustments to that analysis, without then getting lost in the swirl of redefining the context and the terms.

And don’t forget: How and what you analyze depends on why you’re analyzing. Spend more time framing the problem and less time trying to solve it {D 71: Rose-Colored Jitters}.

And now onwards! You can access by clicking the cheery pink button link right here.

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