Researching your competitors is more successful when you actually look

by Octopus Intelligence Octopus Competitive Intelligence

Researching your competitors is more successful when you actually look

Researching your competitors includes knowing what products they offer. And what makes them stand out from the crowd and how their pricing strategy is structured. But researching your competitors is more successful when you actually look. It may sound flippant, but many don’t or leave it to a platform—job ticked off the today list but insight not even seen.

In the world of business, organisations must stay ahead of the competition. This means being aware of what threats and opportunities are out there. And determining what the future competitive landscape looks like. However, if you’re not looking for it, you’re likely not going to find it. That’s why businesses need to be aware of these threats and look for ways to counteract them.

Researching your competitors to know them inside out will give you more confidence. Confidence that you are setting your prices competitively. Enable you to respond to their marketing campaigns with your own initiatives. Get to know them well, and you can predict their marketing campaigns. And have your own launch a week, day or hour or so before them.

Using this knowledge, preemptive strikes could focus on competitors’ weaknesses. And, more importantly, target what their customers really want.

Researching your competitors allows you to find current and future threats to you. Threats from both new entrants to your market and existing competitors. Realistic about how successful you can be.

Who are your competitors?

Everyone faces competition. It doesn’t matter who you are and what you do. You will have competitors. Everyone no exception. Even if you’re the only fintech platform in the world that has a particular technology. You will have competitors as customers choose where to spend their money instead of with you. They can keep their cash in their pockets too.

The internet has opened up markets to infinite opportunities and countless global competitors. It’s vital to look at current and new competitors. And importantly, the future ones and their associated technologies.

A competitor can be a new business providing a substitute or similar products. Something that could put your offering into retirement. But it could be a product or service you could also sell or work with them in a partnership. An opportunity that fills a gap that your current offering fails to achieve, and you know your customer base will look it. Better you selling to your customers than a new competitors

Best way to find competitors

The best way to find competitors is to sit down and think about where you would find the information. Meet with your team and build a list of sources of where to look. Create alerts on Google or monitor the media. Search for signals of change and have red flags. Red flags are raised when something happens within an agreed set of criteria. For instance, if this happens, we do nothing. But we alert the senior team and recommend this and that if this happens.

There are countless ways to find information on competitors, including:

Your customers
Your supplier
From monitoring your market
Chamber of Commerce and trade associations
Business databases
Advertising
Job adverts
Press articles
Exhibitions and trade fairs
Social media
An Internet search for similar products or services
Marketing literature sent when you sign up for updates
Searching for similar current and pending patents
planning applications and building work in progress

The most important aspect of this exercise is that you are aware of them. Look for the threats and opportunities and determine your future competitive landscape. What’s clear, though, is that if you’re not looking, you are not going to find it.

Researching your competitors is more successful when you actually look

In conclusion, if you don’t look for threats and opportunities, you may struggle to compete. And researching your competitors is more successful when you actually look. Companies need to understand their competitive landscape clearly. And then determine where they fit in. There are countless places to find information about your competitors. But it’s important that you are actually looking. Businesses can develop a plan to stay ahead of the competition. By being proactive and looking for these threats and opportunities. So get out there and finding your competitors today.