Guide on Designing and Showcasing a Competition Slide for Your Business Proposal
A pitch deck is an essential tool for startups and product launches, and incorporating competition slides can significantly enhance its impact. Here, we explore 12 common types of competition slides that help position your product or company effectively against rivals.
1. Competitive Landscape/Market Map Slide
This slide shows your position relative to competitors on key axes, such as price vs. quality or features vs. market segment. It provides investors with a quick visualization of where you fit in the market and your unique space.
2. Direct Competitors Analysis Slide
This slide lists key direct competitors, highlighting their pros and cons or feature comparisons. It illustrates who you compete with head-on and how you differentiate.
3. Indirect Competitors Slide
This slide highlights alternatives customers might use instead of your product. It shows awareness of the broader competitive field.
4. Feature Comparison Matrix Slide
This slide compares product features or benefits side-by-side with competitors. It demonstrates your superior or unique features clearly and logically.
5. Pricing Comparison Slide
This slide shows comparative pricing models. It explains your value proposition relative to cost and affordability.
6. Market Share or Positioning Slide
This slide presents market share data or brand positioning context, underscoring your current or potential foothold.
7. Competitive Advantage Slide
This slide focuses on specific advantages such as technology, patents, team expertise, or partnerships. It emphasizes why you have sustainable edges.
8. Customer/Case Study Comparisons Slide
This slide shows examples of customer preference for your product vs. competitors or customer testimonials. It builds social proof.
9. SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) Slide
This slide summarizes your internal and external competitive factors to give a balanced view.
10. Barriers to Entry Slide
This slide explains why new competitors will find it hard to enter your market, increasing your defensibility.
11. Market Needs Gap Slide
This slide illustrates unmet needs in the market that competitors are not addressing but your product solves.
12. Future Competitive Landscape Slide
This slide discusses upcoming competitors, market shifts, or technology trends and your preparedness for them. It shows long-term strategic thinking.
Benefits of Using Competition Slides
- Clearly articulating to investors why your product or company stands out among rivals.
- Providing a visual and data-driven analysis of the market landscape to build credibility.
- Highlighting your unique value proposition and competitive moats such as IP, pricing, or technology.
- Showing awareness of market dynamics, including indirect competitors and future challenges, which reassures investors.
- Facilitating more confident investment decisions by demonstrating your knowledge of the competitive environment and strategic advantages.
When creating a pitch deck, it's essential to have a clear grasp of the competitive landscape, be knowledgeable of competitors' positive and negative attributes in comparison to the company, and never slander the competition. By incorporating these competition slides, you can substantially improve the clarity and impact of your fundraising presentation.
Visual content such as animated graphics can effectively illustrate market positions and comparisons in the competitive landscape/market map slide.
For the direct competitors analysis slide, technology advancements can be integrated to provide an insightful comparison of features and benefits among competitors.
To highlight customer preferences, lifestyle content featuring education-and-self-development, entertainment, general-news, and sports can be included in the customer/case study comparisons slide.
The future competitive landscape slide can take advantage of animated graphics showcasing potential competitors, market shifts, and technology trends to demonstrate long-term strategic thinking.
