Daily news, dev blogs, and stories from Game Developer straight to your inbox
Sponsored By
Featured Blog | This community-written post highlights the best of what the game industry has to offer. Read more like it on the Game Developer Blogs.
How to Beat Out Your Mobile Game’s Competitors with Competitive Analysis
Want your mobile game to stand out amongst other apps? Competitive analysis can help you better understand your market and chance for success.
4 Min Read
In order to be able to beat your competitors, you have to know not just their weaknesses, but also their strengths and the strategy they are using to promote their mobile games. Once you have a complete and honest analysis of what your competitors are doing, you can shape your marketing strategy and even your game to make it more unique and attractive to your target consumers.
The goal of competitive analysis is to look at what your competitors are doing and use that information to decide how you are going to proceed with your game development and marketing endeavors. If you want to beat your competitors, here is a guide to competitive analysis that will get you started.
Create a competitor profile. You will want to create a profile for each game or each game company that you consider to be your competition. While you don’t have to analyze all of your competition, it is a good idea to analyze a range of different games or companies, so you have a full picture of the market. This section should include:
Overview of the company or game
What is this app or company’s competitive advantage?
Research the competitor’s marketing strategy. This section will allow you to understand what challenges you face as you attempt to compete with each of these games or companies. Detailed research about where they are marketing and how they are marketing will allow you to either create a marketing message that will compete with theirs or to find sections of the market that they have neglected and utilize them without their knowledge. This section should include:
Company or game’s target market
Company or game’s share of the market
What marketing strategies and avenues is this game/company using?
Analyze the competitor’s game. How much are they charging for the game? Is it available on all mobile operating systems, or is it only available on one or two? Discuss the specific nature of the game. In this section, you should include:
Discussion of how much the game costs the users and how much it costs to produce/maintain
On which operating systems is the game available?
List the strengths and weaknesses of the game and the company. During this part of the analysis, it is very important for you to be as objective as possible. It can be tempting to rail against another game and claim that it has no strengths at all. If it is popular among players, however, it must have some strengths, even if it does have very real weaknesses. Treat every weakness as an opportunity and every strength as a threat.
What does this game or game company do very well?
What do they do very poorly?
How can we combat or at least compete with what they do well?
How can we use what they do poorly to our advantage?
Following this system and carefully gathering information about your competitors makes it possible to combat any opposition they may raise and to make their weaknesses your strength. Whether you want to position your game as unique amongst a sea of similarly dull games or you just want to grab enough of a very similar game’s market share to be profitable, analyzing your competition lays the best foundation for your marketing strategy, as well as for an analysis of your own game’s strengths, weaknesses, and competitive advantages.
If you want to beat every or even just most of the mobile games on the market, or simply differentiate yourself enough to garner users’ attention, you will need to know the details of your competitors and their games. Follow this format and once your competitive analysis is complete and you have gathered data on several of your competitors, use this information to properly position your game for success.
Jovan Johnson is a California licensed attorney who focuses on SEO, mobile games, and apps. He is passionate about mentoring students and steering dollars to scholarships, and speaks regularly about career opportunities. He is a principal at Johnson Moo, Furzy, Paymaster.Co, and 320 Instrumentals.
Read more about:
Featured BlogsAbout the Author(s)
You May Also Like
