It’s True, Your Market is Getting More Competitive

If it seems like your industry is getting more competitive, it probably is. 

Why is that you ask? There are a few factors at play here. A big one is that it has never been easier to start a company. Available capital, a freelancer economy, and now the ability to hire talent anywhere since working from home doesn’t appear to ever be going away - translates to A LOT of companies getting up and running relatively quickly. 

Thousands of startups are launched every month in the US alone. The martech industry in particular is incredibly competitive. According to the Marketing Technology Landscape report for 2022, there are now a staggering 9,932 solutions. From 2020 to 2022, the number of solutions within this industry increased 24%. These solutions represent sub industries such as social media software, sales enablement platforms and more. 

Here at Crayon we did our own research to learn more about how competitive companies view their markets. In our 2022 State of Competitive Intelligence report we asked: ‘Would you say your market has gotten more or less competitive in recent years?” 

We found that 59% of our survey respondents said their markets have gotten much more competitive in recent years—an 18% year-over-year (YoY) increase. 

For those specifically in the B2B enterprise space, sales teams are feeling the heat and are unsurprisingly, in competitive sales situations - often. Again, according to our State of Competitive Intelligence report we found that with enterprise organizations (defined by 501+ employees), 50% of opportunities are considered competitive. 

Okay, so markets are getting more competitive. But what happens when (if) you hear the inevitable line “we don’t have any competitors”.....

Andrew McCotter-Bicknell, Head of Competitor Intelligence at ClickUp has some advice on handling this common pushback (P.S. if you haven’t checked out his Competitive Playbook, run don’t walk.)  

"Your competitors may not do EXACTLY what you do - but the fact is, the tech landscape grows nearly 25% every year, so your buyers have more options than ever before. 

These vendors eat up your target audience's attention and make it harder to stay top of mind. So even though they're not offering the exact same product or service as you, they're still impacting your bottom line. That's why it's so important to have an understanding of who you're up against and how they're going to market."

Now that you KNOW competition is fierce, what are your teams going to do about it? Do you have a competitive intelligence strategy in place? If you’re shrugging your shoulders, it’s time to think more seriously about your competitive landscape because yes, your market is getting more competitive.