What should you know about competitors

Learning about your business in relation to your competitors lets you:. Not all competitors are created equal. Know who your direct and indirect competitors are as well as legacy players in the market. Direct competitors have the same product or service offerings as you. Indirect competitors may not offer the same product or service, but they meet the same need in an alternative way — like Airbnb is a competitor to hotels.

Knowing exactly who is out there and what makes them competitive is a great starting place for finding your most important differentiators, or unique selling points USPs. Try to be proactive. Build your own strong campaigns in the meantime.

And there is a fine line between monitoring your competition, and obsessing to the point of strategic paralysis. Your business goals are best achieved by focusing on meeting the needs of your target audience better than anyone else does.

Consistently innovating to ensure your proposition always stacks up favorably against the wider competition. Knowing your competition can help you identify how to develop this strategy. It was updated for Why is it important to know your competition?

The definition of competition Competition is defined as whenever two or more parties strive to meet a common goal that cannot technically be shared. These two distinct competitive categories are known as: Direct competition: Someone who offers the same product or service and compete in the same market. Indirect competition: Someone who offers a different product or service and competes in the same market to satisfy similar customer needs.

What if there is no competition? How do I identify my competition? Keyword research One simple way to get a good sense of your competition is to Google the three or four groups of keywords you would like to be found for.

PPC ads that appear in search results When you do that sort of research, also take note of the PPC pay-per-click ads that appear at the beginning of the search results. Using a competitive matrix A competitive matrix is a great tool for comparing specific features or perceived benefits between your business and the competition. Who's the top salesperson? The most reliable way to get this information is by interviewing one of your competitor's salespeople.

Knowing who drives the most business for your competition can help you identify attractive new hires, or it can help you identify opportunities for teaching your sales staff how to improve their sales strategies. Best customers. New products and offerings. Being at a trade show puts you in contact with clients you can win, and it keeps you abreast of trends and developments in your industry. You can learn a lot, and you don't have to have a booth—simply attending can give you access to all sorts of inside information.

Level of customer satisfaction and engagement. SEO is one of the easiest areas of competitive marketing analysis as you are able to use many tools to examine your website and where it falls with others. You need to use both measurable and written marketing analysis to be informed about key areas of your competition.

The value that your company provides through content marketing can be its differentiator if you do it well. It can be difficult to accurately measure the value of content marketing, but by taking into account a few factors you can glean some insight into how well your content and that of your competitors is performing:.

You can inspect their emails with these factors in mind:. If you want to gain a comprehensive report of the players in your industry, then conduct a survey. You will then be able to find out how you can differentiate your service from the competition.

You are then able to find out how these companies operate and what they will be doing next. You can learn a lot by looking at the type of jobs openings your competitors have and the requirements they are looking for.