How Do You Gauge The Competition?

Home » Branding, Business, Entreprenette, Innovative ideas, Public Relations, Sales, Websites

25 May 2010 3 CommentsBy Sarah Shaw

Assessing the competition is a healthy activity. Most of us want to know how they do what they do right? How did they get that PR, that store, that cool website, that price point???? Here are 22 informative tips from my fabulous experts that should give you some ideas about how to gauge and possibly get ahead of your competition!

1. Shop your competition

The best way to gauge your competition: One of the most effective ways of seeing what your competition is doing is to shop them. If they are a brick and mortar store, go in, see how they merchandise their products, how their staff treats customers, and buy something to see how they handle purchase transactions.

If your store is online, buy something from one of your online competitors. See how they describe their items, how they handle payment, how they package your purchase and how fast they ship.

You'll learn a lot!

Thanks to: Charlene Anderson of Purveyor of All Things Creative.

2. Gauging the competition

The best way to gauge your competition: Sun Tzu wrote if you know yourself and you know your enemy you'll know the outcome of 100 battles. Knowing how your competition sells is critical to you "setting traps" against them. Try to download all their marketing material and get what you can at trade shows and then use their strengths as weaknesses. "Big stable and experienced" can be shown as "slow moving, bureaucratic and not innovative" to your customers if you position it right. Pick the biggest most common company to go after.

Thanks to: Patrick Sweeney of ODIN.

3. Measure the competition

The best way to gauge your competition: One of the first things I do when I'm checking out competitive websites is check their monthly unique visitors on www.compete.com I've been surprised at which sites get a lot more traffic than others that I thought were more popular. This helps me gauge what current marketing tactics may be working and provides me a good jumping off point for forming my own.

Thanks to: Tyler Jorgenson of TylerJorgenson.com.

4. Ask the Middleman

The best way to gauge your competition: If you sell a product in retail locations alongside the competition, it makes sense to check in out key accounts every now and then. While you are at the store, you might casually ask the store clerk, who doesn't know you own the brand, how your brand is fairing relative to your competitors. Act like a potential consumer and ask the clerk his honest opinion on what is selling and what people say about your product and the competition. It's honest feedback and you can make changes from there.

Thanks to: Anthony Adams of SEO Service Dallas.

5. Check Their Traffic

The best way to gauge your competition: We review competitors' site traffic and assume they have an industry standard conversion rate to guess how much sales they are receiving.
We make ourselves stronger by pushing better marketing and PR to get more traffic and do a lot of usability testing to increase our conversion rate.

Thanks to: Danny Wong of Custom Men's Dress Shirts | BL.

6. Competition? No Such Thing!

The best way to gauge your competition: I've found that the strength of the competition is really irrelevant. When I consult new clients for marketing and public relations, I help them find what is unique about their business that no one else can give. Once you've found that, you really don't have competition!

Thanks to: Andi Enns of AndiEnns.com.

7. Buy It & Try It

The best way to gauge your competition: The best way to find out your competitor's customer service level is to put yourself in customer's shoes and to just contact your competitor (not only by phone, but also by email, live chat, and even in person) and - unless it's cost prohibitive - purchase the product or service similar to yours. The insight you gain by simply making a purchase from your competitor can prove to be invaluable to your business; and in most cases you can return the product.

Thanks to: Denis Stepansky of ItsHot.com Diamond Jewelry Watches.

8. Monitor Using Google Alerts

The best way to gauge your competition: If you want to know what your competition is doing, where they are in the news and when, you can set up a Google Alert. Google Alerts is a service provided by Google that will notify you everytime your "keyword" is mentioned across the web. In this case your "keyword" is the name of your competitor. Once you set up the alert you can receive a notice immediately, or on a daily or weekly schedule. You will never again be able to say that you didn't know what your competitor was doing.

Thanks to: Debra Zimmer of The Expert Marketing Coach.

9. Meet with your retail stores

The best way to gauge your competition: Take the time to talk to your customers about their experience with the competition. Ask the retail stores that carry your product what their opinion is of the competition. They may have carried the product before and can provide you valuable information.

Also, go to your competitor's website and find the retail stores that carry their line. Contact them about your product, even if they don't want to carry it, they may share with you their experience with the competition--good or bad.

Thanks to: Sheena Edwards of Lizzie Lou Shoes.

10. Keeping competitors in check

The best way to gauge your competition: When clients tells us that they use a competitor we typically reply in this way. "XYZ Company is a fine firm, just like us! Tell me though, what is it that they do for you specifically that makes them so strong and special?" 9 out of 10 times these prospects are all too happy to share this info. We in-turn input the collected intelligence into a database to track trends and, this information also serves as our blueprint to find weaknesses with various competitors.

Thanks to: Scott Gingold of Confidential Counselor.

11. Sleeping competitors :)

The best way to gauge your competition: Do not be afraid to stand your product up on the desk of the CEO or buyer of a company. Be incredibly persistent but contagiously infectious. If you are, your competitor's product will more than likely "pale".

Thanks to: BJ Rodgers of Greenery Gallery Interscaping .

12. Develop Good Rapoire!

The best way to gauge your competition: Sometimes I will get into amazing conversations with the store owner. I will casually mention what I do for a living. Once in a while the owner will ask me if i have a sample of my product on me (often I do). I know this is unorthodox but you must be able to guage if it's okay to go this far with the owner! Wearing your product whether it be earrings, necklace, scarf or purse is another great way to start the conversation.

Thanks to: Violette Clark of Violette's Creative Juice.

13. Speak to their customers!

The best way to gauge your competition: Most firms will publish testimonials from their corporate clients so phone up the person and ask them why they choose this product and not yours. If consumers are buying the products then go to the store and watch customers purchase the goods and speak to them or set up a question on a discussion forum and start finding out what the feedback is. Then structure your product and services around the key customer desires and highlight your strengths in contrast to your competitors weaknesses.

Thanks to: Daniel Callaghan of MBA & Company.

14. It's All About Price

The best way to gauge your competition: One of the simplest, most effective ways to gauge the strength of your competitors is to determine whether or not they're getting premium pricing. Those that are getting premium prices are the most adept at quantifying and communicating their value to their customers/prospects. They're also have a very clear picture of who their ideal customer is and readily say "No" to people who don't fit their profile. Those that aren't are merely white noise and don't merit your consideration.

Thanks to: Dale Furtwengler of Furtwengler & Associates, P.C..

15. Competitor Traffic Comparison

The best way to gauge your competition: #1. Compete.com is very straight forward and provides a general look at how well your website is doing against your competition. Enter your website, and / or the websites of your competitors and Compete will spit back a "relative" picture of where you stand. It is important to know that the number shown on Compete.com for traffic is not your actual traffic, nor that of your competitors, it is simply a relative look at the sites in reference to each other.

Thanks to: Scott Imbrie of Original Skateboards.

16. Competitor Traffic Comparison

The best way to gauge your competition: #2. Alexa shows a lot more detailed statistics than Compete.com. While Compete.com only breaks down a sites traffic relative to all the other traffic being tracked on Compete.com, Alexa tries to factor a sites traffic as a percentage of global traffic (including traffic outside of their own sample). Since Alexa is updated daily and the developers were trying to be more accurate to actual traffic (and not just trying to show relative traffic) we use Alexa as our primary comparison vehicle.

Thanks to: Scott Imbrie of Original Skateboards.

17. Ask your customers

The best way to gauge your competition: If your focus is to copy or keep up with others, then at best, you will always be one step behind. Your focus should be to carve out your own niche that has no competition.
Even if you are successful at creating your own niche, eventually competitors will nibble at your knees. When your revenue growth slows, assume your competitor is eating your lunch. Ask your customers who your competition is and why they are beating you. No one knows better than them.

Thanks to: "Sex Toy Dave" Levine of SEXTOY.com.

18. Knowledge is Power

The best way to gauge your competition: Our sales team shopped competitors monthly. Each visited 1 store; data was compiled on a chart and shared. The info helped us improve and gave our team confidence working with customers. If someone wanted to “shop around” we pulled out the sheet to show what competitors offered at the same price point. Most people don’t want to waste time shopping around – they just want to be sure they get a good deal. You can help customers make informed decisions without bad-mouthing a competitor

Thanks to: Sunny Kobe Cook of Sunny Kobe Cook.com.

19. Do you have a buzz?

The best way to gauge your competition: One way to gauge the competition without metric evaluation is monitoring "buzz". What are people saying about your company vs. your competition? If they're talking about them and not you, there’s a problem.
Set up Google alerts for you and your competition. Google sends you email when you (or they) get mentioned or linked to online. If you're not being talked about...change it. And be sure to interact, reward the positives and resolve negatives, when it seems receptive and useful to others.

Thanks to: Brent Shelton of FatWallet.

20. Be Alert

The best way to gauge your competition: Set up Google Alerts with competitors' names to monitor the publicity they receive, blog mentions, and more to get an understanding of brand reach and the sentiment surrounding their brands - Are they associated with positive or negative comments? What product characteristics are the most attractive to customers? How frequently are they being mentioned by important influencers?

Thanks to: Megan Shea of RetireLife.

21. Judging the Competition

The best way to gauge your competition: I look at our competitors' web site for a clue on how strong they are. If it looks well done and professional, then you can bet they are a viable well run company.

Thanks to: Bob Hendershot of Supply Sanitation Systems.

22. Subscribe to Google alerts

The best way to gauge your competition: Google alerts is free and allows you to keep tabs on any topic on the web including the name of that competitor you want to keep an eye on. Simply subscribe and you will receive an email with daily reports on any mention of your keyword on websites, blog positngs,the press or just about anything else on the web.

Thanks to: Michael Kite of Freeflow Spas.

3 Comments »

Small Business News Digest, Vol. 3, Issue 23 « Small Business News Digest said:

[...] How do you stay ahead of the competition? [...]

# 29 May 2010 at 8:20 am

Small Business News: Our Product Is Success! | Forum on China Goods Bay said:

[...] How do you stay ahead of the competition? Hear 22 opinions from a range of small business owners and entrepreneurs via blogger Sarah Shaw. Learn more about the tools you can use to figure out how you rank with others in your industry and market enabling you to think strategically and plan your moves to stay ahead of the pack. Don’t miss any of these tips when considering a strategy for your small business. You may be surprised with the results. Entreprenette Gazette [...]

# 30 May 2010 at 12:10 pm

Lisa Illman said:

These are all great ideas, thanks as always for sharing! I also ask friends and family that are customers or potential customers to check out my website and the competitors website. (emailing a link to both is easiest) Then I say, please provide me with three things you like about theirs, mine and three things you do not like about theirs and mine.

Friends, family and customers you have a good relationship with will give you honest feedback. They want you to succeed as much as you! And you will not lose a potential sale with sending those you trust to your competitor’s website.

Cheers!

Lisa Illman, President
Kritter Kommunity, LLC
http://kritterkommunity.com
lillman@kritterkommunity.com

# 22 June 2010 at 9:48 am