Success depends on how effectively you can differentiate your products, services, and solutions from those offered by your competitors. In order to build and maintain your unique selling point among customers, you need to be aware of what your competition is doing. Although “spying” is an extreme term, focused attention and research on your competitors will help your business stay one step ahead!
1. Identify your competition. The first thing that you need to do is find out who your competitors are. If you do not know this information off-hand, then you can do a little research. Check the phone directory, do an on-line search to find out which businesses in your immediate market are offering similar products or services.
2. What marketing techniques do they use? Next, you should look at your competitors’ marketing strategy. To do this you should collect and examine your competitors’ marketing material, such as brochures, print advertisements, web pages, and articles in which they were featured. Also look into any broadcast advertising.
3. What is the selling point? After examining your competitors’ marketing strategies, you should be able to determine the different selling points that each company is promoting.
4. What is the customer experience? Another important piece of information to have about your competition is what it feels like to be their customer. You can go to a competitor as a mystery shopper, check out their websites, or call up for an estimate of services to see what the customer service is like. You can also talk to their customers to see how satisfied they are, and to find out why they choose to do business with a certain competitor
5. Where are your competitors holding? Find out if your competitors’ business is growing, maintaining, or declining. You can do this by looking at their stocks, available financial statements and reports, or credit and background profiles. This will give you vital information about market demand and how well your competition is tapping into it.