4. How To Competitive Shop For Your Brand & Product Line

In this episode, we’re talking about competitive audits for your brand and product. Are you wondering what the heck a competitive audit is? We’ll cover that too.

• Whether you call it a market audit, competitive audit, or comp shop why you should be keeping notes on what your competitors are doing and what your ideal customers are seeing.

• How to inform your brand, product, and packaging strategy by tracking what’s working and not working for your competition.

• The brands and products you need to look at beyond your direct competitors.

• When, where, and how to go competitive shopping

• What do with all of the notes, photos, and samples you collect while conducting a market audit.

• Why the holiday shopping season is the perfect time to start your competitive shopping practice.

Hi, and welcome to Product Packaging and Profit, where we help product-based businesses turn packaging design into a competitive edge to attract customers, grow sales, and boost profits.

I'm Kelley Kempel, After 20 years of designing packaging for national retailers, I founded Hidden Path Creative, a graphic design studio that supports entrepreneurs with branding and packaging to get their products seen and sold. I'm sharing the secrets that launched big brands so your products can stand out.  Let's get started.

This episode of Product Packaging and Profit is sponsored by the Packaging Printer List.

If there is one question I've heard from almost every product entrepreneur I've talked to, it is, where can I get my packaging printed?

No, really, If we were on Family Feud, this would be the answer at the top of the board. The Packaging Printer list is a curated directory of over 45 packaging printers and suppliers across various product categories, packaging types, and locations.

I've handpicked all of the entries so you can be sure you're starting with a vetted shortlist. To grab your copy of the packaging printer list, head over to www.hiddenpathcreative.com/packagingprinterlist.

Welcome back. Thanks for joining me here at Product Packaging and Profit. I am so excited to dive into a really meaty topic today, and what I wanna talk to you about is doing a competitive audit for your product.

Now, what the heck is a competitive audit? It just sounds like a really fancy term for, well, it's a fancy term for taking note of what your competitors are doing.

Take a look at your competition and know where they are at and what they are doing so that you can use that to inform your own product marketing strategy.

As we dive into doing a competitive audit and you know, some people in the retail space call this a comp shop or a market audit, whatever you wanna call it, it's really about creating a list of your direct product competitors and keeping yourself up to date and in the know about what it is that they're doing.

To get started, grab a pen and paper or an Excel sheet and make a list of those direct competitors. 

You might have one or two, you might have four or five, you might have a bunch. But start making that list.  And once you've made that list, we can, we can narrow it down, we can narrow it down to like, let's say you sell candles.

We can narrow it down to brands that target the same customer that you target with your candles. Or like, let's say you create candles with witty sayings on the labels.

Maybe you just wanna look at the direct three competitors that have volume-selling candles with witty text on the labels but get started with the list.

Then we're gonna make a second list. This list is inspirational brands. So brands that you look up to are in the same category.

Let's use this candle example again. Let's say you are selling jar candles with one to two wicks at a 20 to $30 price point.

Your direct competition is also gonna be selling candles at that 20 to $30 price point. But an aspirational brand, an inspirational brand is probably selling a similar size candle at like that 40 to $50 price point.

And why is it important to look at a brand, a brand, a step above because your customers are looking at those brands a step above?

Your customers are looking at those brands and have the desire to buy those products but aren't willing to pay the price for those products.

There's something super interesting to learn there. And the other brands and products you can add to this list for your competitive audit would be brands and products that your ideal customer is shopping for.

We've been using this example of a candle line. What other things are your customers shopping for? If they're shopping for candles, well, one easy.

The next step is they're also shopping for home decor. So what are some of the home decor brands that your customer or your ideal customer is paying attention to?

You wanna kind of think about that, like what are other product categories that your customer is specifically shopping for and you know, what brands in those categories would your customer be aware of?

Get that list. You know, you might spend a couple of days pulling that list together. You might already have that list pulled together, but if you have a product brand, you definitely want to have a list of your direct competition, a list of inspirational brands in the same product category, and then a list of brands and products that your ideal customer is also shopping.

Now you get to do the fun part. You get to actually go shopping. So you've made your list, but before you go shopping, let's, let's hold up for a minute here.

Let's take a step back and let's identify the top timeframes when your customer shops. Now if you're already selling a product line, you're probably seeing this in your sales.

Like there's probably, there may be a couple of months during the year where your sales spike up where you have higher sales and then, you know, everything's kind of average.

And for some brands, for a lot of brands, a top timeframe is gonna be a holiday. For other brands, a top timeframe might be back to school, which actually starts in July, or August.

Or you might have a brand where a lot of your customers shop in spring or in that spring timeframe. Like, let's say, for example, you are in the swimwear category, A key time to shop is gonna be spring as everybody's getting ready for summer.

Plot that out on a calendar. What are those key timeframes when your customer shops? And I recommend scheduling two to four times a year that you are going to do competitive shopping because you're gonna wanna see how things go throughout the year.

Alright,  you've got your list, you've got your key timeframes to go shopping, you are gonna wanna go to stores and you wanna go to stores that carry your direct competition.

Or if your direct competition has their own brick-and-mortar store, go there and, or you can go to like some local boutiques that, you know, carry the same types of products, but you want to spend a day or two going to stores and be really strategic about this shopping.

You're gonna wanna take a few things with you. Your phone is one of the best tools that you have. Bring it.

You're gonna wanna take pictures. It used to be pretty difficult to go into a store and take pictures, but it's not so much anymore.

You know, you can go into a store, look at a display, take a photo, and nobody really asks any questions. And if they do, you just say, you know, I'm, I'm shopping, I wanna, I wanna think about this for later.

And you know, sometimes as a packaging designer, I might kind of take things, you know, take something off the rack and then take a photo of it or take a box and move it to a table and take a photo of it.

You know, you just wanna have those visual reminders of what you're seeing out in the market because what you're, you know, in the first phase of a competitive audit of competitive shopping, the first time you go out, you're just looking to collect as much information as possible.

You wanna have a record of what all of your competitors are doing. And honestly, you might also see some interesting ideas that are different brands while you're out, while you're out there, something new, something you haven't thought of before, a package with a new material, a package that looks interesting that you wanna learn more about, snap a photo of it and take notes.

You can take notes on your phone or you can take a notebook with you and, you know, make some notes after you've left the store, but you also wanna take notes about why something caught your eye, your initial reaction to a product or a package.

And, you know, just, just keep everything together. Now once you've shopped in stores, also go online. So go to the e-commerce sites for the brands on your list.

Go to Amazon, go to the other marketplaces that are selling the products, and take a look at what they're doing.

Take a look at their product images, and take a look at how they're photographing their product. Take a look at their product descriptions and their product names.

All right, so we've just done a lot of research, we've collected a lot of information. At this point, it may seem overwhelming.

Like, what, what are we gonna do with all of this? Well, now we're at the point where we need to summarize our findings.

We need to take all of this data that we've pulled and really sift through it.  a lot of times your first competitive shop is gonna be one of the biggest.

You might wanna break it down, but once you've shopped all of these channels, you've pulled all of your photos together, you've pulled all of your notes, and you wanna start to look at what are the common themes and trends.

For all of your competitive brands, what things are they all doing in common? Are they all using photography on their packaging?

Are they all using icons on their packaging? Are they all producing products in a similar material? Are they all highlighting the same particular feature?

You really want to find those common threads and themes. Those are the things that customers are going to actually expect in your product category.

You wanna make sure that you know what those, what those major common themes are. The next thing is you're going through all your data that you're gonna wanna pull out is what are the standout ideas?

What is something that only like one person is doing, one product is doing, one brand is doing what is that thing?

And then you're gonna wanna dive a little bit deeper but identify those standout ideas. It might be a new product idea, or it might be a new product feature.

You know, it could be any number of things, but you want to identify those standouts. Another thing you can take a look at is missing.

Is there something that one of your competitors did that looks like it kind of flopped? And again, that could be any number of things.

Like they tried a new product, but every store you went into that particular product has all of its stock on the shelf and they're starting to mark it down.

Or you saw that they tried something in their online listing. And from a customer point of view, it just doesn't seem like it's resonating.

Meaning like somebody might have written something in a product description and you as a viewer just don't even understand it.

That would be a miss. So take note of those things because then you can be sure not to repeat their mistakes and keep a running list.

I mentioned before that the first time you go out to do a competitive audit can be a little daunting because you're collecting so much information.

Here's the great thing. The first time is like the biggest audit, right? Cuz you're collecting all of this foundational information.

You are creating your lists, you are taking pictures of everything. The second time you go out. You don't have to reinvent the wheel the second time you go out.

You can look at your findings from the first competitive audit and just look at what has changed since then. It'll become more of an efficient machine where if you're doing this a couple of times a year, you're just kind of looking for what's new.

You are looking for what has changed. You're looking if anybody's doing anything different. You don't have to go back through every single competitor at every single point.

And once you've created this summary of what you're seeing of these common themes and trends, the standout ideas, and the misses, you can use this to adjust your own strategy.

What are you doing and how does it stand up against these things? You're seeing these common themes and trends. What do you need to infuse into your product or your product messaging or your packaging to pick up on those familiar cues that customers are expecting in your product category or you're seeing what everybody else is doing?

Do you see an opportunity to do something a little bit different? Is there a portion of the market? Is there a customer for this product category that is being ignored that you can pivot to connect with?

You can look at where those standout ideas are and is there a standout idea of your own that's not being covered?

And like I mentioned before, those misses, just keep note of them. Make sure you don't make the same mistake they did.

Now, part of the reason why I'm doing this episode right now is that the holiday is coming up. You are up to your eyeballs on holiday.

You are getting ready for your biggest selling season. You've been working on your products all year for really the super bowl of retail.

You are ready to jump into the holiday and have your best quarter all year selling your products. I just don't want you to forget to take that step back and take note of what is going on out in the market.

Take a little bit of time, schedule a day or two to shop, and collect this data so it can help you to inform your product strategy for next year and potentially even your product strategy for the holiday next year.

As a packaging designer, I always find it super interesting to go shopping during the holidays and check out everybody's holiday product, packaging, bundled offerings, and all of that special goodness that everybody puts out into the market to give themselves an edge for the holiday.

And I'm curious to see if there's more of that this year. But what you'll see is there might be something that one or two brands do this year that then next year more brands pick up the same idea, whether it's a design idea, a product bundle idea, or a product marketing idea.

Typically those standout ideas that you've identified out in the market, people then replicate the following year. So I want you to just take a minute to get yourself ahead for next year by doing your own competitive shopping this holiday season.

Thank you so much for listening to Product, Packaging, and Profit, a podcast for product entrepreneurs looking to level up with packaging.

We hope you'll join us next time to hear more about how packaging can help propel profitable product businesses. If you enjoyed the show, please rate and review us wherever you listen.

And be sure to come back in two weeks for our next episode. Until then, this is Kelly Kempel of Hidden Path Creative.