Gathering Information on Competitors

Assessing your competitors is a crucial aspect of marketing your business. In order to know where you fit into the market, you must first gain an understanding of how others are promoting themselves, pricing their products and services, and attracting new customers.

To continue to stay on top of the game and prevent other firms from cutting in on your market share, experts suggest you should be gathering information on competitors on an ongoing basis. In other words, use your small business software to integrate competitive intelligence into your operations.

Getting started

You can begin by asking yourself some basic questions to help determine what you already know about your competitors. Use your small business software to start a file on each firm.

Who are your competitors? Make a list of companies you consider to be the top five competitors in your sector. Consider both direct and indirect competition. Add information such as size, how long they have been in business and estimated revenue. Also, do you know of any additional businesses set to launch within the next year that could be considered competitors?

How are they doing? Next, revisit your list and fill out details about what you know regarding the current state of those companies' recent performance. Is their business growing, maintaining or declining? Can you identify the reasons why their business is moving in one direction or another?

What are they doing? Take notes about your customers' operations and marketing strategy. How do they price their products or services? Where are they located? How and where do they advertise? What is their web presence like?

Where do you fit in? Think about how the product or service you offer is similar or different to those offered by your competitors. Is there anything they are doing that you should imitate? How can you use your small business software to help accomplish this?

Going further

Once you've determined what you already know, you can take steps to find out more about what your competitors are up to and how you could potentially improve your own business.

Talk to customers.Stay in the loop by chatting to customers about what competitors are doing. Also make sure your staff is keeping an ear to the ground in a similar way. If you have a regular customer survey or way of gathering feedback, you can make this part of the process by including a couple of questions dealing with competitors.

Talk to colleagues. Similarly, ask others working in your field what they know about your particular competitors. You could also chat with your accountant, lawyer or those who work with similar small businesses and may know something about competitors' plans.

Use the internet. There is likely to be a good amount of information on your competitors that can be gathered online. Start by visiting their websites, which may include press releases, information about new product launches, pricing data and financial reports. You can also visit chat groups and communications on trade association websites or general small business sites to try to learn more.

Personal visit. Put yourself in the shoes of a customer and stop by your competitors' locations. Take notes about how they present their products or services, as well as how competitors interact with merchandise.

You can also visit competitors' booths at trade shows to learn more about their offerings. Who are they trying to appeal to and how are they going about it? If you are uncomfortable doing these investigations personally, consider sending an employee.

Read up. Read trade publications and newsletters within your industry to keep tabs on what others are doing. What types of trends and strategies are making the news? What do reports and surveys tell you? There is likely to be some additional information of this type available at the library, at trade associations or at your local business development center.

Monitor advertising. You can learn a lot about competitors by reading their advertisements in newspapers, magazines and other locations where you would be likely to spot them. This is a great way to find out more about competitors' product features, pricing, customer base and current market position.

Become a member. If your competitors offer some type of customer loyalty program, you could become a member or have an employee sign up. Regular newsletters can supply a great amount of information on strategies, sales, new products and more.

In conclusion

Gathering competitive intelligence need not be costly or complicated. In fact, many experts suggest small businesses cannot afford to ignore this valuable information - both when a company launches and at critical points as it grows.