We all need to spend time working out exactly what makes us different from our competitors. If we aren’t clear on this, we can’t expect our customers to be clear.
In a world filled with ever increasing competition, businesses that are better able to connect and engage with their customers are those that win and one of the first steps in the process is snooping on your competitors.
Let’s face it, your competitors directly or indirectly spy on you to learn how you do business. Ethically speaking, your competitors should not be spying, some call it competitor modeling.
But many groups of bad guys do it for their own survival. What will a competitor do by knowing areas you are not best at, will they help you? They should be looking inside themselves for such things instead of being overwhelmed.
However, the reality is that your competitors know things that you don’t know. There are also things that you know that they don’t. I help firms close the gap between what they do and do not know relative to their competitors.
Outgun your competitors
In what ways can you outgun your competitors without spying? How can you uncover their strategy that ties all of their actions? One monitors competitors to take into consideration their strategy, positioning, branding, marketing, business strength and weaknesses before designing a plan and launching a marketing campaign to differentiate your offering and gain competitive advantage.
If you had known this, you would not have to spy. If you did have competitors spying on you to learn how you do business, then you can gain competitive business advantages.You can learn about trends, product development directions and overall direction of your competitors.
Then, you can determine if you want to follow suit or go on your own direction. Almost every strategic plan includes a component on competitive analysis. Even a basic SWOT (Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) has elements comparing yourself to competitors.
There are also many tools out there that focus on measuring yourself against competitors, for instance that lets you see what keywords your competitors are bidding on and can help you gain insight into missed opportunities.
Flip side
Some companies have a library of competitive information. But when you ask them what info they have about their customer, they pull out a small binder, dust it off and present some basic demographic/psychographic information I’ve always been keenly focused on driving a business from a customer centric point of view.
If you truly study the insights, needs, wants of your customers and focus your business on meeting those needs, then competitors become less important.
Make sure that focusing on competitors is not a distraction from what is more important – that’s focusing on your customers.
As a closing thought, I believe that it is essential for every business to stay aware and be informed about their competitors, but not become obsessed by them.
Over the years I have seen businesses that have spent more time focused on their competitors’ businesses than they have spent on their own. To quote an old phrase, ‘Be aware but not alarmed’.
Competitors will come and go. Make certain that you know how your business compares, be clear about what your competitive advantage is and always aspire to be better at what you do.