Competitors: How to Out Think, Out Smart and Out Manoeuvre Your Competitors

For some reason many small businesses seem to fear competitors.

I love them!

There is just so much you can learn from your competitors.

A highly competitive market place reflects a strong demand for your products and services. Your challenge, and the reason for producing your marketing plan, is to out-think, out-manoeuvre and out-market your competition before they know what hit them.

Your first step is simple - list all the businesses you can think off that compete in your market - whether directly or indirectly.

Use your own knowledge, yellow pages, the internet, specialist directories....

Look anywhere you might gain insights into companies that serve your market space. Think laterally - it is not always obvious who may offer the same services. e.g. Accountants frequently offer business development consultancy.

Who are your top 3 competitors now? Who will be the top 3 in the future?

These are the companies you want to analyse in more detail. You should know:

• how they think;
• what their strengths are;
• what their weaknesses are;
• where they can be attacked;
• where the risk of attack is too great....

So, for each of these three companies:

• describe their business, operating and marketing philosophies (how they think)
• list their 3 major strengths
• and list their 3 major weaknesses.

How will you match, better or avoid your competitors strengths? Which weaknesses can you exploit? What will you need to do to exploit more weaknesses? In what areas of their activities should you avoid competing directly?

Your answers to these questions must be at the heart of your own marketing plan.

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Monitoring your competitors is something you should be doing as a planned, systematic and routine activity. Part of your business as usual - not simply as a one-off event to produce your marketing plan.

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Most small businesses won't need to go further than this level of competitor analysis. If you do want much more information and don't have the time or knowledge to do it yourself have a look at Aware - Competitive Analysis - A Brief Guide. Slightly more in-depth view of analysing your competitors.

If you would like more information on the whole topic of market research try the British Market Research Association.

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