How to conduct competitive research and analysis in the cannabis industry

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In each industry, if you don’t know what your competitors are doing, your business will be at a significant disadvantage. The cannabis industry is no different. You must fully understand the competitive landscape at all times for your business to thrive, not just survive.

The purpose of competitive intelligence research and analysis

The truth of business is that your competitors are looking for ways to steal customers from your business. You should do the same. Yes, you want to attract new customers to your market, but you also want to attract customers who buy products or services from your competitors to your business instead.

If you don’t know what your competitors are doing, you can’t compete effectively with them. You’ll miss opportunities your competitors are keen to take advantage of, and you won’t see threats that could steal customers and revenue from your business.

The two main types of competitive defense in business are a proactive defense and a reactive defense. It’s up to you to decide which defense your company uses.

Put simply, a proactive defense strategy requires you to continually conduct competitive research and analysis to ensure you retain and gain market share. On the other hand, a reactive defense strategy is used by companies that wait and see what their competitors are doing before taking action to retain or gain market share.

The bottom line is that launching a counterattack to protect your company’s market share is far more difficult and costly than being proactive. To do this successfully, you need intelligence and data.

What is a competitive analysis?

A competitive analysis is a formal process that collects information and data about your competitors – both direct and indirect – so you always know what they are doing. The goal is to ensure that your business stays ahead of the competition, so your business can seize new opportunities and are not threatened by competitive onslaughts.

Competitive analysis begins with thorough research of each of your competitors. But it doesn’t stop there. To be effective, competitive analysis should be conducted on an ongoing basis. That means you need to continually update the data and information in your analytics so you’re never caught off guard by your competitors’ actions.

Information and data to include in your research

A competitive analysis typically includes information about each of your competitors so you can fully understand their current market position, strengths, and weaknesses. With this information you always know what opportunities are available for your company and which competitors could endanger your company.

Some of the information and data to include in your analysis of each competitor includes:

• Products and/or services they offer
• pricing
• Where they sell their products and/or services
• who their customers are
• How they promote and market their products and services
• Your online footprint
• Brand reputation and position in your market
• Your partners, suppliers, vendors, etc
• management team and employees
• your investors
• Financial position
• Their story to understand where they’ve been, the choices they’ve made and where they might go in the future

With all this information, you can perform a SWOT analysis for each competitor to identify their strengths and weaknesses in relation to your own company and the market as a whole, deriving opportunities and threats.

Tools to conduct competitive research and analysis in the cannabis industry

Visit your competitors’ websites and social media profiles to gather as much freely available information about them as possible. If your competitors are publicly traded companies, you may collect additional information and data from their financial records, annual reports and other publicly available publications and reports.

Additionally, tools like BuzzSumo, SEMrush, and Ahrefs can provide insight into your competitor’s content, search engine optimization, social media, and influencer marketing strategies.

The best solutions for conducting competitive research and analysis in the cannabis industry are the Cannabiz Media License Database and Cannabiz Intelligence™.

The Cannabiz Media License Database provides license holder contact information (including social media links), licensed business operational details, analytics, up-to-date regulatory information, daily news alerts, compliance verification capabilities and more for cannabis and hemp licenses in the United States, Canada and international markets. In other words, it has all the information you need to research and analyze cannabis license holder competitors. If you subscribe, you can even set up alerts so you can be notified of business license changes and keep your competitive analysis up to date.

For example, below is a snapshot of Curaleaf Holdings’ profile in the Cannabiz Media License Database showing a high-level view of the information available to you as a Subscriber. You can also drill down for more information by state, county, city, license type, license status, employee information, and more. Each contact’s profile associated with a license and/or company includes contact, social media and additional details so you can get a complete picture of who your competitors are and what they are doing in the industry.

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As shown in the image below, Cannabiz Intelligence provides financial information and reporting beyond the information about cannabis licenses and the companies and individuals associated with those licenses found in the Cannabiz Media License Database. In addition, Cannabiz Intelligence includes mergers and acquisitions data, reviews, patient data, wholesale flower price data, financial positions and much more.

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You can pull a significant amount of information and data about your competitors from the Cannabiz Media License Database and even more from Cannabiz Intelligence to set your business up for success.

Your next steps in conducting competitive intelligence research and analysis in the cannabis industry

Without adequate information and data about your competitors, you are putting your business at risk. Start conducting competitive research and analysis today to establish a baseline. Update the information regularly so you’re never caught off guard. It’s always better to deploy a proactive defense than a reactive defense.

Subscribe to the Cannabiz Media License Database and Cannabiz Intelligence to begin your competitive research and analysis in the cannabis industry. Schedule a demo to see how these two solutions can help your business differentiate itself from the competition.