Leveraging Competitive Analysis to Guide Product Direction
About
Marker Golf is a digital golf scorecard app that allows users to run games across groups and events. After supporting the platform’s UX design (see example here), I decided to explore how a robust competitive analysis of the scorecard market could guide product priorities.
Based on market and user research, analysis, and collaboration with the founder x software engineer, I developed the product direction for Marker following the official MVP launch in August 2024.
Role
Product manager
Timeframe
June 2024
Deliverables
Product direction & competitive analysis
Informing product direction with limited data.
Although initial user research had guided a set of product priorities to accomplish prior to Marker’s MVP launch in August, the post-launch roadmap remained unexplored. Furthermore, while research to date had come primarily from the users, it was uncertain how Marker would fare in the competitive environment.
Drawing from my background in venture capital, during which I developed many market landscapes, I set out to assess how Marker’s current and potential competitive positioning could help guide product direction moving forward.
RESEARCH
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Source competitors
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Identify key data points
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Top-down research
ANALYZE
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Organize data
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Identify trends & nuances
DISTILL
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Summarize findings
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Create data visualizations
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Determine impact
ITERATE
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Discuss with stakeholders
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Adapt findings
Market research
To develop a competitive analysis for Marker, I first conducted bottom-up research on the various players in the digital golf scorecard market. For each identified company, I explored the business model, UI/UX, and features (free vs. premium).
As with every competitive analysis, each company added seemed to introduce new parameters to investigate. Soon, I had a model with 26 different features, organized across categories like performance, events, and community.
So what?
While tempting to stay in the weeds of the spreadsheet, once I had assessed each company, it was time to take a step back and look at the big picture. Here is all the data, now so what?
ABOUT
CHALLENGE
PROCESS
SOLUTION
IMPACT
As I experimented with different market segmentations, thought through interpretations of the free versus paid features, and considered different value propositions, I slowly chiseled my way towards a thorough analysis of the digital golf scorecard market.
The culminating report leverages this market analysis to guide product direction. Based on Marker’s competitive positioning within the Events sub-sector, along with several other market dynamics, I identified (4) key product priorities:
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Maintain alignment between competitive positioning and user needs.
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Optimize the current event user experience.
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Continuous discovery of advanced event functionality.
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Assess baseline user needs.
Enabling discovery
After aligning on the findings of this report, the next step was to develop a roadmap for achieving these product priorities post-launch.
Initially, we set out to assign KPIs and user research methodologies to the identified priorities. However, instead of developing a product roadmap with pre-determined features, we realized that enabling discovery was most important.
With this in mind, we decided to frame the immediate post-launch stage as ‘product discovery,’ during which we would assess certain research questions and hypotheses with identified data points. After a certain time period (TBD), we would then workshop the findings and formalize next steps or functionalities to execute in a product roadmap.
With limited data prior to an MVP launch, a competitive analysis allowed us to identify product priorities to excel Marker within the market. For example, we validated that event functionality was a key differentiator and identified event-related solutions as a priority.
Rather than jumping at certain features, however, we enabled discovery by developing a sort of post-launch roadmap wherein questions and hypotheses will soon be tested, (de)validated, and turned into solutions.
The competitive analysis report effectively integrates market and user perspectives to guide product direction for Marker. The post-launch product discovery plan is still WIP as we define and assess the impact of different metrics.
Following MVP launch and a certain time period of tracking, we will reconvene to translate these findings into a tangible roadmap with product iterations.
Key takeaways
BEING RESOURCEFUL
Despite limited user data pre-MVP launch, leveraging a competitive analysis allowed us to inform product direction in a meaningful way.
INTEGRATING THE MARKET & THE USER
Integrating market and user perspective helps to ensure that the product maintains differentiation while solving user needs.
PRIORITIZING DISCOVERY
Enabling discovery in a methodological way by testing key hypotheses with data will allow us to develop product-market fit post-launch.