NFIB

What You Need to Know About Your Competitors
11/ 12/ 2003

by Jeffrey Moses

A company's success depends largely on knowing as much as possible about competitors, so that internal operations can be designed to effectively offer competitive pricing and provide comparable or superior customer service.

When researching competitors, it should be easy, and very useful, to find out information on your competitor's prices, marketing strategies, customer policies, suppliers, credit card policy and terms for financing.

Knowing these aspects of your competitors' businesses can help you maintain competitiveness. To really grasp a competitive edge, though, try to find out information on the following:

* How they pay their employees, what benefits they offer, how much value they place on employee-friendly workspaces, etc. Knowing this sort of information will help you stay competitive in terms of attracting and retaining good employees.

* How your competitors' Web sites compare to yours -- in regards to content, look, readability and "stickiness" (tactics used to entice customers back).

* The position of competitors' Web sites in the search engine results. One of the main objectives of any Web site is to come up near the top on Web searches, primarily on three of the most widely used search engines, Google, AOL and Yahoo (both AOL and Yahoo now use Google's search engine). If your competitors constantly come up higher on the major search engines than you, you need to find out why and how you can make that happen for your business.

Position on Google Web searches depends somewhat on how many links a site has to other Web sites, including how many links it has to other Web sites that have many links.

You can find out this information by searching on Google for a competitor's URL and then clicking on "link to." By doing this, you will see a list of all sites to which your competitor's Web site is linked. By examining this list, you can find potential links for your own Web site. Contact these and set up links to your own site, and you will quickly find your site climbing in the search engine results. Read other Tools and Tips articles for more ideas on optimizing your Web site for search engines.

* What your competitors say about you. Do they tell customers your products or services are inferior? Do they tell customers you run your business poorly?

Don't worry too much if your competitors badmouth you: customers can read between the lines. Businesses that demean competitors are only hurting themselves. Outright lies, on the other hand, should be addressed. When you become aware that a competitor is lying about your product/service quality, you should write a letter to the owner or president of the company, informing him or her about the misrepresentation of your company. Ultimately, such tactics could give you grounds for a lawsuit -- but it's usually best to address and settle these issues before they get out of hand.

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