Whether you’re an elite athlete or a millionaire entrepreneur, invariably you can learn a great deal from analysing your competition. After all, if you don’t understand who and what you’re up against, how can you develop fully? Sometimes we’re so busy moving forward we forget to take a look around us. Here we outline a few ideas for how you can improve your business by taking a sideways glance.
1) Strategy – Not Copyright
It generally isn’t a good idea to go around stealing your competitors’ copyrighted material. It’s about understanding how they do what they do and what you can learn from it. Maybe they have developed some up-to-the-minute marketing channel use. Perhaps they have a really slick user experience or their customer service is seamless. Whatever it is, can you match it or improve on it?
2) Use Customer Feedback
Of course, you should always use your own customer feedback, but have you reviewed that of your competitors too? Complaints can be tough, but often it’s the people that complain who understand customer experience the most (both positive and negative), and if your competition aren’t listening you can steal a march on them. On the flip side, positive competitor feedback can help you pinpoint exact customer needs and tailor your proposition appropriately. Even if they are doing it well, could you do it better?
3) Look at Their Suppliers
Who is helping them in their moves through the market? Often industry segment experts will be more than happy to share best practice, so you can also learn from the challenges of your competitors behind the scenes as well as front of house. For instance, if you’re looking at SEO in Northern Ireland, then Northern Ireland SEO company Ryco Web could advise you on the very latest developments as they see them with the benefit of their extensive expertise.
4) Test It Yourself
How about actually becoming a customer of your competitor? There’s no better experience than that gained first-hand, and moving through a sales process end to end allows you to review their customer touchpoints and learn something every step of the way.
There’s much to be learned from those master athletes who watch detailed game re-runs until they are ingrained in their head. And who wouldn’t want elite success?