It’s said you should keep your friends close and your enemies closer. While the competition may not exactly be your enemy, there are still advantages to knowing them. When you know who you’re competing with in business, understanding what they’re offering, it’s possible to make your services stand out by comparison. There’s another saying: To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom. You can learn a lot about your own company by studying the competition.
Self – Discovery
If you’re going to learn from the competition, you have to be open to the process. Don’t let jealousy cloud your observations. Understand that you can benefit from what other businesses have already tried. Whether they were 
successful or not, you can take those lessons and apply them to your own products and services. Looking at your industry through the lens of another company can also help you view your offerings as a customer. It’s a way to gain valuable insight about your target market: what they want, what they like, and what makes them loyal.
Who is the Competition?
Have you ever heard of a mystery shopper? Also known as secret shoppers, these are people hired by businesses to assess things like customer service, product quality, and store atmosphere. It’s a way of finding out what kind of impression a business is making without alerting employees that they’re being surveyed. Learning about the competition is kind of like being a mystery shopper. But instead of helping them, the research will benefit you. Here are some ways to learn what the other guy is doing:
- Talk to former customers and ask why they left and whether they now go elsewhere.
- Talk to suppliers about the competition. Even if they can’t give you specifics, you can gain insights into trends in buying, new innovations, etc.
- Attend seminars, conferences, and expos. This can afford you the opportunity to observe several competitors at once.
- Look through competitors’ websites.
- Hire a consulting firm who will conduct a competitive analysis for you, providing a report with findings and recommendations.
- Subscribe to the competition’s newsletter or blog and follow them on social media.
Questions to Ask About the Competition
Your goal when investigating a competitor should be to find out what they’re offering and how they’re offering it. That means knowing about their products and services, including the ways in which they’re innovating. As far as the how goes, how are they marketing the businesses and how are they handling distribution and delivery? Through this research, you can ask the right questions and draw some useful conclusions:
- What are you doing better? How can you capitalize on that?
- What are they doing better? Can you improve in the areas where you fall short?
- How are they advertising? Does this provide avenues to connect with an audience you’re ignoring?
- How much do they charge? Are your prices too high? Too low?
- Do you have the same TM? Are there subtle differences you can capitalize on? Do you want to steal their TM or concentrate on a segment in their blind spot?
Change is Growth
How can all this information and insight change your business? Depending on what you discover, you can opt for a number of changes. You may decide to change your positioning by highlighting a service the competitor doesn’t offer. Or you can copy an approach that’s working for them, but give it your own branding and twist. Finally, don’t forget to look at the big guys. Small businesses can adapt what larger companies are doing, and maybe get a jump on other similarly-sized competitors.
