Whatever you do in business you will always find competition. Even if you are out there creating a new innovative product, you will soon find competition that is catching up with similar products or alternatives, possibly cheaper than your product offering or offering additional value that you have not thought of. Competition is a good thing. It keeps you alert and ensures you’re always looking to improve your product. Competition is also good for the customers and the industry as a whole. These are some lessons you can learn from your competition.

Make better decisions

Looking at competition will allow you to know what to do. Study and learn your competition, learn what they are doing and then make your move. Your moves should make you stand apart from your competitors eg. expand your product portfolio, or target a specific niche, understand your unique selling points and advertise and brand yourself in a way that gets that message across. One thing that you should not do is copy the competition. You need to stand out and not blend in to establish yourself as the leader. Looking at competition also allows you to understand what not to do. Not every business is successful, not every business decision is right. Look at what your competitors are doing, learn also from their failures.

Understand the differences

Look at your competition to understand where you stand with respect to them and to understand where your business can grow and what is the potential of your business. Understand the details about services and products that are sold on the market by you and by your competition. Know what drives customers to go for your competitors’ products as opposed to yours.

Know who they are and what they are capable of

One thing to keep an eye on is the nature of your competitors’ business. Who are they? How many people do they employ? What kind of people do they employ? How do they pay their staff? Who are their suppliers? It might not be possible to get all this information so easily but if you do it can be very useful.  It is also useful to find out the financial situation of the competition. This allows you to benchmark yourself visavis the competition. This will help you understand how to use money effectively. It also gives you an understanding of how fast a competitor can move a decision based on the financial backing behind the operation.

Set the right price tag

This does not mean price yourself lower than the competition. By looking at your competition and understanding their pricing with respect to value. Understand your own value in light of the competition and price your product strategically.

Do you have any insights on the subjects, please comment below and get the conversation going. If you need help in analysing the competition, do get in touch for further discussion.