1. Pricing and why. Finding pricing is as easy as calling or checking out your competitor’s website, but also look for any hidden fees for services if applicable. Many industries are notorious for this. That information can be helpful in marketing materials for example. It can also give you an idea of where your business is at by comparison. That’s the easy part. Next, try to find out why competitors charge what they do. Maybe they have to charge X due to overhead and other costs, maybe they are able to charge more because they are better known or more trusted, maybe they charge less than you are able to. Whatever the case, understanding why they set their prices where they do will let you know what your options are. Maybe you can start charging more. Maybe you need to figure out ways to lower your prices or to better justify prices. Maybe you’ll discover methods that will allow you to lower your prices. This information will change regularly, so try to keep up to date.
2. Customer Service. This is pretty straightforward and the main purpose is to find weaknesses in competitors, or if you find competitors do as well as your business in this area, customer service is going to become less of a focus in your marketing—still talk about it if you have great customer service, but find other benefits and prioritize those over customer service. If you find that competitors are actually better on the phone, more helpful in the store or on site, you need to make some changes. It’s a big deal. Even if you do a great job, bad customer service can really poison the experience. It’s just a fact of human nature that most of us will hire someone we like over someone we don’t, even if the person or business we don’t like does a better job, even if they are cheaper.
3. Quality. Again, whether competitors offer better quality or not is only as relevant as pricing and what people need or expect. Naturally, the goal is always higher quality for a better price and everyone tries to offer it and everyone promises they offer it and only some of them are telling the truth. What is helpful here however is to figure out (and be honest about) quality then figure out the underlying reason and see if there is opportunity to get better in this area or a marketing opportunity to expose lower quality in competitors.
4. Marketing. The normal reaction to competitor marketing is, “They must be doing it this way for a reason.” Throw that thought away. First you would be amazed how much time and effort your competitors are putting into marketing that isn’t effective. If you happen to be one of the few with a local competitor doing it the right way, repeating what they do will only turn your business into, “That other business that tries to do the same thing.” You might be better off doing something completely different poorly than the exact same thing well. But in order to figure all of that out you need to really understand what your competitors are doing.