3rd: Research your competitors
Feb 13, 2023
Learning what your direct and indirect competitors are doing can help you come up with a better, more successful business strategy. You can build a list of things that worked and didn’t work for them and use these ideas to reduce your chances of going wrong.
Competition analysis is not limited to studying their pricing. You also need to research their products, services, sales and marketing strategies, innovations, social media presence, local/community participation, etc. When you know what they are up to, it may be easier for you to outperform them or at least ensure that your business meets the industry standards. Studying your competition and industry in general can help you identify the latest trends, opportunities, and areas of improvement.
While this sounds like a lot of work, thankfully the internet and social media have made it quick and easy. Here is what you can do-
- Start building a list of competitors. If you already have a list, dig deeper and find more businesses that do almost the same thing you do or maybe have almost the same set of target audience. Categorize them as your direct and indirect competitors. You must track your direct competitors routinely. Indirect competitors may have the same audience as yours. So, it is good to study them once in a while and see how they are operating.
- Review the pricing strategy of your direct competitors. Find out where you stand. If your prices are higher, see what you can do to lower your pricing without compromising quality or profits.
- Study their products and services and update yours if needed.
- Read customer reviews of your competitors, especially the ones where customers have experienced dissatisfaction. Use this data to improve your processes and for lead generation.
- See how they are promoting their business and use this data to improve your marketing strategy.
Keep in mind that you don’t always have to do what your competitors are doing. The goal of competition analysis is to learn from them (their hard work, their success, their failures, etc.) and use the information to build a winning business strategy.
