You likely presently know all about SWOT analysis. You may possibly even have your oppositions goal demographics, market place share and sales figures on hand. But have you at any time applied the identical form of stringent methodology to analysing your competitors’ visual presence in the marketplace? A graphic layout audit is a amazing and rather quick way to get a crystal clear image of how your competitors are perceived, what critical messages they are speaking and how you look when positioned together with them. It’s also a beneficial training that informs you about the sort of communication your customers are acquiring on a common basis from your vital competition.
So how do you do it?
The initial stage to a graphic design and style audit is to compile each piece of product sales and promoting collateral you can find from the opposition. This features trawling by means of their website and using display screen grabs of vital internet pages, subscribing to their mailing lists, finding your hands on their brochures, obtaining their products and solutions so you can have a look at packaging and many others. etcetera.
According to Peter L. Phillips writer of “Developing the Great Structure Temporary – How to Deal with Structure for Strategic Benefit”, one of the greatest, the very least highly-priced and quickest methods is to attend all business trade exhibits. There is almost nothing illegal, unprofessional or immoral about this follow. Business enterprise is simply a match we are participating in to get immediately after all!
Mr Phillips also suggests making use of your sales pressure members to discover out what the opposition are up to.
As they arrive into immediate get hold of with customers just about every day, they can frequently decide on up aggressive literature from the shopper. They only require to know what you need and of training course why you want it.
So as soon as you have compiled the information, what do you do with it?
The ideal way to start is by putting your competitors’ info up on the wall and analysing them 1 by just one. Invite as a lot of individuals as achievable from your product sales, marketing and business enterprise teams to give their unique viewpoint on what design factors are doing work really properly for the competitiveness, and what weaknesses they can see. By commencing your investigation on your opponents very first, you will build up a bit of objectivity so you can then flip the identical severe critique onto you.
Look for strategies the style and design and language make a document unique. Do they have a helpful search and sense that demonstrates a lot more personalized provider? Do they appear far more expert than you? Why? Is it for the reason that the webpage is a lot less cluttered, the colors are more toned down or some other purpose? Is their internet site easier to navigate than your have? What do you believe their motives powering these selections were being? Is there nearly anything you can understand from them? Most importantly, how are these competition employing layout for competitive benefit?
Now for the tricky part – utilizing the similar investigation on oneself. Reassure your personnel that this is not an physical exercise exactly where they will need to defend their work, it is basically a way of attaining beneficial facts that could give you a aggressive edge that enhances your base line. This part of the audit at times proves a bit tricky so you could want an independent impression from a graphic design company that understands the system to support you out.
It is amazing how much strategic info this process can crank out. It will give you new ideas and a fresh viewpoint that can affect the whole way you approach your internet marketing for the yr. And considering a large amount of organizations believe of graphic style as an bothersome inconvenience, if you are the very first to use this extra strategic technique you will find it is yet another tool to assist you stay one phase forward of the competitors.
