Chapter 6- Product Manager Guide to Competitive Analysis- Part 2

In my last post, we looked at how we can understand our competition better. Now, its time to find ways to monitor our top competitors. We want to keep an eye out how our competitors are doing so that we can learn and adjust our strategy if needed.

What exactly do we need to look out for:-

1. Funding- More funding means they can hire more people and work on more things.

2. Acquisitions- It can help them in improving the strategic positioning of the product; by reaching to more customers

3. New features launch- It can attract more customers and what not

Now the question is how can do it easily and effectively.

For Funding and Acquisitions - There are so many tools available in the market Crunchbase.com, Pitchbook.com, etc. to get the information.

Here is what Crunchbase says for Udemy. As you see, Udemy has acquired one company and has a total funding of $ 223 M ( last funding on 2/19/2020)

While Course a competitor to Udemy has also acquired 1 company and has 10 funding rounds with total funding $356.1 M ( last one of 4/25/2019)

For features launch- one will have to follow the company's blog, follow press releases as well keep an eye on the company's social media updates, One tool that I will recommend to get social media updates is mention.com.

Another option can be to look at app store updates. Here is a screenshot for Coursera update on Itunes. In version 3.6.0 they launched a newly designed search experience as well as added Coursera plus in search among other things.

How do you monitor your competitors. Share your preferred ways so that others can learn as well