According to the best-known military leaders, one should know enemies by sight to fight them. That is the same thing with business: to successfully combat your competitors, you should study their strategies very thoroughly. Knowing what advantages their strategies have over yours, you will be able to build a successful and truly invincible marketing campaign. Taking into account their blunders and failures, you will find solid arguments to gain confidence of your potential buyers. All in all, by spending time on your competition research, you make a lucrative investment.

Three Types of Competitors

There exist only three main types of competition in nature: direct, indirect and passive.

Direct competition refers to the products that serve the same purpose that yours. For example, if you sell high-tech vacuum cleaners, you will have up to 100 competitors – companies specializing in the same niche. All of them are your direct competitors, and you should find out why your unique selling proposition is better.

Indirect competition stands for the products that aren’t the same with yours, but can be bought and used instead of yours. For instance, a vacuum cleaner provider should consider cleaning agencies and broom manufacturers as potential indirect competitors. Since the end benefit is the same, you should concentrate not so much on the result – clean rooms and fresh air – as on the process itself, describing how effective and user-friendly your product is.

To fight passive competition, you have to face not a particular product or company, but the bitterest enemy of all marketers around the globe – human laziness and inertia. An average customer thinks: why buying your stunning vacuum cleaner, if he/she can just sit back and fool away, no effort/money/time being spent? The unwillingness to make decisions represents a desirable alternative for many people, and you have to mount a really irresistible marketing campaign to win their attention. Here you should act as if you combated indirect competitors, stressing out that your product is easier to use, cheaper, more efficient etc.

Studying Your Competitor: Facts to Discover

Having defined, what type of competitor you currently deal with, you can start your research.

Study competitor’s product. You are used to saying your product is the best, but can you explain why? Comparison is a powerful marketing strategy, and you may cash in on it, provided that you have learned enough about competitor’s product.

Visit competitor’s shops. Talk to their salesmen. Get a price list. Listen to what their prospects ask and pay attention to the service. Does competitor’s shop look presentable? Is the staff qualified and friendly? Does it offer quality customer support? Would you buy from them yourself? This question list is endless, in fact. Stick to the basic idea: what does your competitor offer that you don’t? Apply their positive experience to your business.

Talk to competitor’s customers. What do they like and dislike about your competitor? Which factors are decisive when they are choosing between two sellers?

Follow competitor’s marketing campaign. Start collecting all ads they publish, visit their site and subscribe to their newsletter. Find out how your competitor attracts new prospects and do the same – yet better.