Problem statement
Context
Botsonic basics
Methodologies to solve this assignment
1.1.1: Identifying direct competitors to Botsonic
Approach
Finding direct competitors of any product involves two broad pathways. Following is the list of those pathways and techniques used to identify competitors in the same:
- Identifying companies that are solving the same problem, providing the same offerings, and targeting the same personas. Techniques:
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Key phrase search:
Search for keywords like “AI employee support,” “Conversational AI for employees,” etc. gives us various products trying to rank on those keywords and blogs published by companies targeting the same personas as us. On top of that, search engines also provide similar keywords, such as “AI-driven HR platform”, which can be searched again to get broader results.
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Keyword research:
Tools like Google Keyword Planner and Google Trends provide us with commonly used keywords based on a search query. To be more specific, we can also filter on country, time, and type of search.
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Looking for sponsored listings:
Most of the companies across segments target keywords related to use cases to get high-quality traffic on their website for better conversions. The same phenomenon can be used to find direct competitors.
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Finding companies that are trying to be visible against a competitor brand. Techniques:
- Brand search:
A simple search like “Leena.ai competitors” or “Leena.ai alternatives” (or other keywords) can help us find various blogs and listing platforms like G2, Capterra, Alternative.to, etc., listing competitors for some brands we already found in part 1.
- Looking for sponsored listings:
Similar to 1.c, small-to-mid-level companies try to run ads on the keywords related to their bigger competitors to get eyeballs of their potential clients, and because of this, big brands are also bound to run ads on their own brand-related keywords to prevent their potential clients from churning to other competitors. The same practice can help us find competitors from some brands we already found in Part 1.
- Sitemaps/footer of competitors:
As we saw in 2.b, most of the small-to-mid-level companies try to target keywords related to their bigger competitors. In a quest to do the same, they tend to have certain competitor pages that they try to get indexed against competitors’ brand keywords. To get indexed faster, they usually keep these visible in their footer or sitemaps so that GoogleBot can capture them faster. We can try to find the same for such companies, leading us to bigger competitors.
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From reports and investors:
Usually, whenever investors invest in a specific market, or a big company invests its internal resources in a specific market, they tend to publish reports related to the market, containing market shares, top players across segments, etc. That can be a good source for looking for top companies in a particular market.
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Tracing back products from references where we have observed the use case being used:
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From product branding:
Many products plug in their logo or domain on the UIs exposed to their client’s platform. This helps the users trace the product back.
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From rendered scripts:
In the case of employee automation bots, many clients embed certain products on their platforms. This is done by rendering an external Javascript provided by the product. This can easily be identified in the developer tools → Sources tab, where all third-party scripts are loaded.
Using the above approach, the following competitors are identified. (Please note that this is just a list of products that are similar in offerings to what Botsonic is aiming for in employee support automation (a final filtered list is there in the next section)
Leena AI- Build a zero ticket enterprise
HR Service Desk Software | Rezolve.ai
Free Conversational AI with Workflow Automation | Workativ Assistant
Improve Employee Productivity with AI Assistant - interface.ai
Instant HR Guidance with Enterprise AI Search
AI Help Desk Software for Conversation Ticketing - HappyFox