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Competitor Information

Introduction

Knowing who your competitors are, and what they are offering, can help you to make your products, services and marketing stand out. It will enable you to set your prices competitively and help you to respond to rival marketing campaigns with your own initiatives.

You can use this knowledge to create marketing strategies that take advantage of your competitors' weaknesses, and improve your own business performance. You can also assess any threats posed by both new entrants to your market and current competitors. This knowledge will help you to be realistic about how successful you can be.

This guide explains how to analyse who your competitors are, how to research what they're doing and how to act on the information you gain.

Who are your competitors?

All businesses face competition. Even if you're the only restaurant in town you must compete with cinemas, bars and other businesses where your customers will spend their money instead of with you. With increased use of the Internet to buy goods and services and to find places to go, you are no longer just competing with your immediate neighbors.

Your competitor could be a new business offering a substitute or similar product that makes your own redundant.

Competition is not just another business that might take money away from you. It can be another product or service that's being developed and which you ought to be selling or looking to license before somebody else takes it up.

And don't just research what's already out there. You also need to be constantly on the lookout for possible new competition.

You can get clues to the existence of competitors from:

 • local business directories
 • your local Chamber of Commerce
 • advertising
 • press reports
 • exhibitions and trade fairs
 • questionnaires
 • searching on the Internet for similar products or services
 • information provided by customers
 • flyers and marketing literature that have been sent to you - quite common if you're on a bought-in marketing list
 • planning applications and building work in progress

 • the products or services they provide and how they market them to customers
 • the prices they charge
 • how they distribute and deliver
 • the devices they employ to enhance customer loyalty and what back-up service they offer
 • their brand and design values
 • whether they innovate - business methods as well as products
 • their staff numbers and the type of staff that they attract
 • how they use IT - for example, if they're technology-aware and offer a website and email
 • who owns the business and what sort of person they are
 • their accounts at Companies House if they're a limited company
 • their annual report - if they're a public company
 • their media activities - check local newspapers, radio, television and any outdoor advertising
 • How they treat their customers
 • who they are
 • what products or services different customers buy from them
 • what customers see as your competitors' strengths and weaknesses
 • whether there are any long-standing customers
 • if they've had an influx of customers recently

Read about your competitors. Look for articles or adverts in the trade press or mainstream publications. Read their marketing literature. Check their entries in directories and phone books. If they are an online business, ask for a free trial of their service.

Are they getting more publicity than you, perhaps through networking or sponsoring events?

Make sure that information which is commercially sensitive, eg details of pay or benefits, is not exchanged with your competitors in order to comply with the Competition Act 1998. The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) can impose tough penalties on businesses that breach the Act.

Go to exhibitions
At exhibitions and trade fairs check which of your competitors are also exhibiting. Look at their stands and promotional activities. Note how busy they are and who visits them.

Go online
Look at competitors' websites. Find out how they compare to yours. Use, with discretion, the interactive parts of their site. Is the information free of charge? Is it easy to find? Business websites often give much information that businesses haven't traditionally revealed - from the history of the company to biographies of the staff.

Use a search engine to track down similar products. Find out who else offers them and how they go about it. Websites can give you good tips on what businesses around the globe are doing in your industry sector.

Organizations and reference sources
Your trade or professional association, if applicable. Find your trade association at the Trade Association Forum website.

The local Chamber of Commerce. Find your local Chamber of Commerce at the Chamber Online website.
Directories and survey reports in any business reference library.

Hearing about your competitors:

Speak to your competitors. Phone them to ask for a copy of their brochure or get one of your staff or a friend to drop by and pick up their marketing literature.

You could ask for a price list or enquire what an off-the-shelf item might cost and if there's a discount for volume. This will give you an idea at which point a competitor will discount and at what volume.

Phone and face-to-face contacts will also give you an idea of the style of the company, the quality of their literature and the initial impressions they make on customers.

It's also likely you'll meet competitors at social and business events. Talk to them. Be friendly - they're competitors not enemies. You'll get a better idea of them - and you might need each other one day, for example in collaborating to grow a new market for a new product.

Listen to your customers and suppliers:

Make the most of contacts with your customers. Don't just ask how well you're performing - ask which of your competitors they buy from and how you compare.

Use meetings with your suppliers to ask what their other customers are doing. They may not tell you everything you want to know, but it's a useful start.

Use your judgment with any information they volunteer. For instance, when customers say your prices are higher than the competition they may just be trying to negotiate a better deal.

How to act on the competitor information you get:

Evaluate the information you find about your competitors. This should tell you whether there are gaps in the market you can exploit. It should also indicate whether there is a saturation of suppliers in certain areas of your market, which might lead you to focus on less competitive areas.

Draw up a list of everything that you've found out about your competitors, however small.

If you're sure your competitors are doing something better than you, you need to respond and make some changes. It could be anything from improving customer service, assessing your prices and updating your products, to changing the way you market yourself, redesigning your literature and website and changing your suppliers.

Try to innovate not imitate. Now you've got the idea, can you do it even better, add more value?

Your competitors might not have rights over their actual ideas, but remember the rules on patents, copyright and design rights.

What they're doing worse than you:
Exploit the gaps you've identified. These may be in their product range or service, marketing or distribution, even the way they recruit and retain employees.

Renew your efforts in these areas to exploit the deficiencies you've discovered in your competitors.

But don't be complacent about your current strengths. Your current offerings may still need improving and your competitors may also be assessing you. They may adopt and enhance your good ideas.

What they're doing the same as you:
Why are they doing the same as you, particularly if you're not impressed by other things they do? Perhaps you both need to make some changes.

Analyse these common areas and see whether you've got it right. And even if you have, your competitor may be planning an improvement.

Here's how competitive analysis gives this business an edge:

Instalec Ltd is an established electrical contracting business, based in Luton. Director Lesley Jeffs began using regular competitive analysis as a business development tool four years ago. Combining a number of methods, the analysis continues to drive improvements across many areas of the business.

What they did

Assess the competitive landscape
"Attending a seminar on business development was the starting point for our competitive analysis. The speaker, from a company called DSP Solutions, was inspirational. We signed up for bi-monthly coaching that included an assessment of our competitive landscape.

"There are literally hundreds of electrical contractors in our area, so we couldn't hope to analyse them all. DSP helped us to identify our key competitors and draw up a list of what we wanted to know about them. The list included customer service, pricing, employment practices and staff qualifications. These were all areas where we felt we had an advantage, but we needed to quantify it."

Gather information
"The first thing we did was a telephone survey. We called competitors to assess their response times and the overall impression given. We also requested copies of their company literature. You can assess the quality of the literature, and it's a good test of efficiency to see how quickly it arrives.

"Websites proved another simple way to gather information, as did trade journals, local newspapers and our local Chamber of Commerce. Customers and suppliers can also tell you a lot and talking to them doubles as a networking exercise that helps to build relationships."

Act on the analysis
"Our analysis has given us an edge in so many areas. For example, recruiting qualified staff is a big issue. Looking at competitors' recruitment ads and rates of pay has helped us refine our own procedures in order to attract the best people.

"We also found that many competitors performed poorly in answering phones and returning calls. In response, we've made sure that our own phones are always manned and that missed calls are returned promptly.

"We benchmark our performance and review our analysis at management level every six months. Our employees are kept up to date too. It's important that staff know why you're doing analysis and how they can help.

"The competitive landscape is always changing, so you have to keep your analysis up to date. We monitor new competitors via the local press and industry contacts, as well as keeping a close eye on established competitors."

What we would do differently

Do it sooner
"Now that we take competitive analysis seriously, it's hard to imagine how we managed without it. I wish we'd done it sooner."

Have more confidence
"In the early days, we often felt nervous about asking for information, particularly from customers. We've learnt that as long as you're professional and uses the information to improve your service, most people are happy to help."