Which competitor threats need to be addressed and which can be ignored? Are your competitors prepared to fight for every deal or settle into a niche? Cascade Insights’ B2B Competitive Landscape Analysis puts your competitors in the proper perspective.
Our Approach to Competitive Landscape Analysis
In B2B tech, it’s not always obvious who the competition is. Often, buyers are simultaneously considering end-to-end, platform-based, and point solutions. And it’s not just features that make the sale. Any number of factors from implementation concerns, support models, or the tone of sales conversations can convince customers to buy or not to buy.
By talking to your competitors’ customers, partners, and former sales reps, Cascade Insights can identify which differentiators really matter to target buyers and why. You’ll gain a clearer understanding of how your competitors are meeting or failing buyers’ needs and expectations.
Expert Insight at the Speed of AI
Truly impactful research goes beyond the data you’ve had in front of you for a while. By combining the power of AI with our deep human expertise, we can move faster than other firms while still bringing insightful, comprehensive, and uniquely human perspectives to any research study.
How We Leverage AI: AI significantly enhances our ability to organize and analyze conversational data, quantitative data, and secondary sources of information rapidly. This allows us to identify patterns and trends with greater efficiency.
Fluid Intelligence™: However, AI alone cannot capture the full picture. That’s where our team’s expertise shines. We bring:
- Emotional intelligence – Human researchers interpret intent, emotion, nuance that AI might miss and business implications of those insights.
- Adaptive methodology – We adjust a line of questioning based on participant screener details, live responses, and always dig deeper where necessary.
- Tech sector expertise depth & context awareness – We challenge assumptions, validate insights, and connect them to real-world trends.
- Bias detection and correction – Our researchers detect uncertainty, subtext, and hidden biases all of which can lead a research project astray.
In short, great research isn’t just about collecting words or text. It’s about listening with empathy, paying close attention to your words and tone, nonverbal cues, and what is unsaid as much as clearly stated. These human capabilities drive great research that uncovers valuable insights, ultimately delivering a competitive advantage.
When Do You Need B2B Competitive Landscape Analysis?
You’re Under Threat
In the B2B tech sector, market leadership often changes quickly. To stay on top of a constantly evolving technology stack and an endless stream of upstart competitors, competitive landscape analysis should be a regular undertaking. Without a clear understanding of your competitive landscape, you can easily miss new rivals or fail to see new threats posed by strategic changes to your long-standing competitors’ product development, marketing, or sales efforts.
You See An Opportunity
Cascade Insights’ Competitive Landscape Analysis allows you to compare your competitors’ capabilities, sales approaches, and go-to-market strategies. This comparison often illuminates gaps in the market. You might be uniquely positioned to fulfill an unmet need for target buyers
Acquisition Is At Hand
Competitive landscape research can also assist venture capitalists, private equity firms, and large enterprises considering an acquisition. Beyond just analyzing the company you are about to acquire, we provide a broader competitive context. You might even find that a different company makes a better acquisition target than your initial choice.
What is Competitive Intelligence Research?
A complete guide to all things competitive intelligence research: when you need it, how it’s conducted, what competitive advantage can be gained, how it can work for you, and more.
Read the GuideResearch Backed by Thousands of Conversations with B2B Buyers & Sellers and 15 Years of Context
Cascade Insights has done competitive intelligence work since our inception. Our CEO Sean Campbell is a member of the Council of Competitive Intelligence Fellows, an invite-only organization. Sean has also co-authored the book “Going Beyond Google: Gathering Internet Intelligence.”
Our competitive intelligence expertise combined with our B2B tech specialization means we know how to ask the right questions of the right people. That means, our analysis brings you insights you can actually use.
The Right Questions for Competitive Landscape Analysis
- Which upstart competitors should we keep tabs on?
- Are any long-standing competitors becoming less of a threat?
- What does each competitor fear the most?
- How much does each competitor fear us?
- Where do competitors excel at selling and where do they struggle?
- Who are our competitors’ ideal customers?
- What are the key buying criteria for the customer base of each competitor? Is it similar to our customers’ key buying criteria?
- What business and technical challenges does each competitor try to address with their product development, marketing and sales efforts?
- How often do competitors engage with their partners?
- Which of our key partners also work with competitors?
- Do competitor customers have buyer’s remorse?
- How are we perceived in our competitive landscape — leader, follower, laggard?
- What kind of sales, marketing, and product initiatives should we launch based on gaps in the marketplace?
