How to research your competition

Published on January 15, 2009 How to research your competition

Whatever business you are in, competition is part of doing business.  Knowing who your competition is the first step in being able to ensure your pricing structure is appropriate for your market, and knowing who else your potential customers may be buying from.

There are a number of  strategies you can use to identify and research what your competition are doing. Here are just some of them:

Online

• Google is your friend. Search for your industry by name or any of the top competitors you know about and see who is on page on. Visit their sites and read their about us pages. See if they are running any specials. Look at their product ranges and pricing. How does it compare to yours?
• Use Google to see how many links your competitors have to them. Type link:www.competitorswebsite.com.au into Google and it will return some of the sites that link to them. Repeat this exercise in Yahoo (the command there is linkdomain:www.competitorssite.com.au) as Yahoo often reports more links than Google.
• Research how many pages have been indexed on your competitors.

Offline

• Yellow Pages – look at what your competitors are saying about themselves in the Yellow Pages. How big are their ads? What do they say? Is your ad there too?
• Business Associations – joining an industry or manufacturers group may give you a wealth of information about your competitors and what they are doing
• Libraries – the library is an under utilised resource for researching your competition.  If your competitors are publicly listed companies, you may be able to obtain their annual reports from the library. You may also find business directories (from all around the world) and for government industries you may even find market research reports.
• Buy from your competitors. If you are a business, buy from your competitors as a personal customer. Listen to how they sell themselves and what they give you. Compare it to your own. What kind of experience do they create? How did they make you feel as a customer?