Making business decisions based on trends can be dangerous. Why? Because following trends and trying to mimic competitors may not be the right choices.
Some trends are sticky. I might argue that artificial intelligence (AI) is a trend at the moment. But I doubt it’s going anywhere. Others are fads masquerading as trends, such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) or fidget spinners. Boy were those hot during the pandemic. Following trends is a lot like trying to time rises in the stock market. You might make a ton of money or you might go broke.
One of the reasons that monitoring trends in your industry is important is so that you can uncover potentially profitable new market and/or product segments. The things you uncover will help drive your go-to-market strategies.
For example, in the fintech world where I spend a lot of time, customers are very focused on money management features inside their online and mobile banking platforms. If your bank or credit union isn’t providing you with budgeting and investing tools it's likely you will take your money elsewhere. This is one of the reasons that new-age digital banks, such as Chime and SoFi, have started to gain market share. They knew the features that mattered to their target audience, i.e. digitally savvy millennials, and built those features into their products.
For your product(s) to succeed, you also need to be mindful of the trends in your industry.
Leveraging Google Trends to find opportunities
Many of the customer research methods I use can help you uncover those trends. Another option is to do some keyword research. One way to do that is through Google’s Trends offering.
Let’s pretend that your product is an AI chatbot. Google Trends can tell you everything from a) interest over time in the topic; b) what geographic regions have the most interest; c) rising topics; d) related queries.
Source: Google Trends
Not only does this information tell you how popular a topic is, but you can also use it to determine who the biggest competitors are. If you look on the bottom right side of the image you will see the name of some of the more prominent competitors in the AI space. Such as Poly AI, Perchance AI, and SoulFun AI.
Example using Amazon products
If you are selling consumer products, consider going to Amazon and looking at the New Releases section. New product releases are categorized there by department. If your product is in the Handmade Products category, you can use this method to see which new products are trending. On the day I pulled these images, the #1 product was an Egg Pops Musical Christmas Tree Ornament. It has 22x more reviews than the second most popular new release in Handmade Products, which is a leather recipe book.
Source: Amazon - New Releases - Handmade Products
How could this type of information inform the product decisions you make? What it tells me is that we were in Christmas tree setup season and people were buying things to go on their trees. If I’m in the Handmade Products space and looking to create a new product, maybe I make an ornament of some sort.
Monitoring what your competition is doing is also risky, especially if your model is to let them make the first move and then copy their moves. How do you know they are making the “right” moves in the first place? Still, you should be aware of the competitive landscape.
In preparing to write my latest book, and the accompanying online course that I'm currently building, I performed my own competitor research. You can see that research here. You can duplicate that template, for free. But, you will need a software solution called Notion. Don't worry, they have free plans.
That research helped me understand the total addressable market (TAM) opportunity, i.e. demand for products like mine, how the competition was pricing their product, the value they offered, and their product’s value proposition. More importantly, you will see a theme here, the reviews of those products lead me to areas of opportunities (AOO) where my product could stand out and win. For example, two of the competitive products had multiple negative reviews about the instructor’s delivery. The feedback was that it was like they were reading from a script. So, to act on that, when I start recording the accompanying online course, I’ll do my best to not read from a script and be more spontaneous and energetic.
Building a competitor matrix
Another way to capture competitor research is with a competitor matrix. How you structure this matrix can vary. For example, if you are building software and want to compare features you should structure your competitor matrix similar to the below example.
What I like about matrices like these is that it lets you see how competitive your product is with a quick glance.
If you like that template, you can access and download it here, at no cost. By the way, I had Gemini (Google's AI agent) build that for me. It's another example of how AI can help you in your business.
What’s great about that type of template, is that, if you are fundraising, a similar version can and should be included in your fundraising pitch deck.
How often should you be doing this analysis?
A regular cadence of trends and competitor research will keep you informed of what is going on in your industry and market(s). How often you do this analysis depends on a variety of factors.
For example, if you are in the AI space, things are evolving so quickly that you may need to do this type of analysis monthly. However, if you are in a space where things don't change as quickly you can afford to do this research quarterly. I don't recommend allowing the cadence to fall to anything longer than quarterly.
Above are just a few examples of desktop research you can do to stay up to speed on the trends in your industry and who the biggest competitors are. There are a bunch of other messages. I'm just sharing a few of them.
What's important is that you perform this research regularly and that you use that information to drive your go-to-market strategies.
In my latest book, Go-to-Market Made Easy: Your Roadmap to Customer Acquisition, I shared my exact playbook for taking products to market. You can find it on Amazon.