Fri, 08 Nov 2013 00:00:00 GMT
Studying your competition is a great way of learning about opportunities and gaps within the market you are serving. In addition, monitoring them and their progress helps you to assess where your business stands as compared to them. Studying your competition should be just as much a part of your core business strategy as advertising or budgeting!
In light of the above many entrepreneurs may not know how to legitimately and legally glean and learn from their competitors. Below are a few guidelines on how your SMME can learn from its competition.
- Always keep tabs on what your competitors are doing and “why” they are doing it. You can sign up to their newsletters or follow them on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, to find out the latest on what they are up to. This will eventually help you find ways of getting ahead of them. Simply copying them will mean you are always a step behind them and this will not help your business to grow. If your competitor has introduced a new service, find out why they would make such a move. Analyse if your business would be able to provide a similar service, only with a few more extras or a better strategy.
- Monitor your competitors’ social media pages to hear what consumers are saying about their products. If most consumers are complaining, find out how your business can offer them a better experience. However, if consumers are happy, you will get a clearer idea of what they are looking for in the products or services you offer, and find ways on improving on this.
- Check if your competitors are expanding. This can be with regards to offering more services or opening a new store in another city. Such expansionary moves indicate that your competitors have seen an opportunity in that area and they want to benefit from it. You can then assess if your business would benefit from a similar move and even wait a few months to see if your competitors are doing well before making your own attempt.
- Talk to your dissatisfied customers and try to find out why they are disgruntled. Most times you will be able to learn why they prefer your competitors and specifically which ones. You may receive valuable insight into what your business does not offer, but your competitors do. It would be a great way to improve upon your service and retain your current customer base and hopefully expand it to include a few of your competitors’ customer as well.
Hopefully the above strategies will help you to gain insightful information with regards to improving your services, goods and customer experience. Analysing competitors can reveal critical information with regards to their business strategies. This can prove to guide your business development into a direction you may never have thought of or saw potential in!