Business can often be described as a battle between two or more companies vying to serve the same public. If you are hoping to come out on top (in the minds of your target audience) then you cannot leave anything to chance. Every bit of knowledge counts, and that includes knowledge about your competitor’s brands as well.
Knowing Your Competitor’s Brand Comes with A Lot of Benefits
The better you know your competitor’s brand, the easier it is to outperform them where it matters. Not only will knowledge of their brand help you double down in the areas where your business is ahead, but also inform you of opportunities created by gaps and shortcomings in your competitor’s brand.
Learn from Their Errors
You and the competition are trying to serve the same segment of the public. So that means you can learn from their mistakes while completely avoiding falling into the same pit.
Has your competitor suffered backlash because of recent post or PR event? Get together with your team and study why the post kicked up a storm, and how you can avoid a similar fate for your business.
You also want to watch how your competitor handles the brand crisis in order to inform your own strategic response should you fall into a crisis yourself. Keep an eye on the positives and negatives and come up with your own crisis communication plan.
Build from their Gains
You don’t have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to your brand. But you do have to try to outdo your competitors in order to stand out.
Take a look at the successful brand strategies which your competitor uses and study if those could work for you and how you can build on them. You don’t want to mimic and copy everything your competitors do, but you want to examine the strategies to see what works on the target audience, rather than starting from scratch.
Learn How to Position Yourself
The reason why many businesses offering the same product can exist in a market is because each business can position itself differently. The same product or service can be offered in many different ways so that each business stands out as “unique”.
And a fool-proof way of ensuring your positioning is rock solid consists in looking at how your competitors have positioned themselves.
The more you know about your competitor’s positioning, the more you can avoid coming across as a copy of another business serving the same market. This makes it easier for customers to differentiate between your business and that of your competitor and make choices based on what each is offering.
In some cases, you and your competition can be similarly positioned and even then studying the competition’s brand will prove crucial in knowing what needs to be done in order to get ahead.
At the end of the day, when it comes to the battlefield that is the world of business, every piece of intel counts; so take some time to examine your competitor’s brand. You never know when you might stumble across that crucial piece of information that might be the key to success.
