You provide quality products and services to your customers. You treat your employees kindly. You enjoy what you do, and you are genuinely proud at the end of the day. And that’s great! That’s the way it should be!

But are you forgetting something? While you’re great at what you do, you’re not doing it alone. Chances are, you have a lot of competition out there, and it’s important for you to pay attention to what they’re doing.

Keeping an Eye on the Competition

It may sound relatively easy to pay attention to what your competitors are doing, but with life as it is today, it can be overwhelming. Your competitors could be taking advantage of every resource available at their disposal, and you would need an extra set of eyes to follow them all.

Consider this.

  • 65 million businesses are using the free pages on Facebook.
  • 25 million business profiles are on Instagram.
  • 87 percent of active pinners said they’ve purchased something because of Pinterest.
  • 78 percent of all Americans ages 18-24 use Snapchat.
  • Twitter has 330 million monthly active users.
  • LinkedIn has 500 million users.
  • 8 billion users log into YouTube every month.

All that means that your competitors are probably somewhere in those numbers. And that’s just free social media marketing, and those are only the top social media sites. Imagine how many more places your competitors could be making an impact: print advertising, pay-per-click advertising, radio advertisements, billboards, in-person social networking, and so much more.

You really can’t keep up with it all without help. And that’s where we come in.

What You Can Do

Even if you work with a digital agency for your marketing needs, you should keep your eye on the competition as well. Here are some ways to not only keep track of what your competitors are doing, but also improve your own outreach and marketing processes in general.

  1. Follow your competitors, and follow their followers, on every social media site.
  2. Regularly post on your own sites, and take advantage of every appropriate site you can. You definitely shouldn’t neglect the big ones, but also don’t overlook the smaller ones that might be just right for you.
  3. Keep up with trending news about your industry.
  4. If possible, visit the business in person to see what the building looks like, paying special attention to their branding and treatment of customers and employees.
  5. Review their websites. You might find that yours needs a facelift – or feel pride in the fact that yours is better.
  6. Research their reviews. It will help you identify what they’re doing right and what they’re doing wrong, so you can capitalize on both. When you know what they’re missing, you can pick up the pieces.
  7. Attend social networking events in person, and join any local business chambers or other relevant organizations if you have not already done so. It’s important to not only get your name out there, but your face as well. Your competitors are probably doing so already.
  8. Read the signs, watch the commercials, and listen to the radio advertisements, just to see what they’re saying and how they’re presenting themselves.

Most importantly, however, stay true to yourself. Just because your competitors are doing something, it doesn’t necessarily mean you should be doing it too. They could be taking the wrong path completely. What you’re doing could actually be so much better – because you’re the trailblazer.

To learn more about how we can help you keep an eye on the competition and determine what’s working and what isn’t, see our website or give us a call at (248) 530-6000.

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