Do you know what your competitors did today? Business is fast paced and constantly changing. In order to stay effective and competitive in the marketplace, you have to know what is happening around you. Perhaps most importantly, you should know what your competitors are doing on a daily basis. What are they promoting? What prices are they selling at? How is their business advancing? Competitor monitoring is something that can keep you informed and in control.
Competitor Monitoring
There are all types of competitor monitoring available, that let businesses monitor and analyse their competition in a variety of different ways. Price monitoring is just one aspect of competitor monitoring which can prove to be particularly effective in helping businesses stay competitive. For example, if you have an ecommerce website and your sales drop off all of a sudden for no obvious reason, competitor monitoring might have the answer. Your competitors might have lowered their prices significantly enough to draw customers away from you.
Alternatively, product development and diversity can also have an effect on how your business performs. In the same scenario where you suffer a drop in sales for no obvious reason. Competitor monitoring might reveal that a competitor has added a new range of products that give them an edge.
With this knowledge, any business has the power to make more informed decisions and choices in where they should be taking their business and how they can develop to fit with market trends and advances.
Innovation and Change
Innovation and change are key to business. Without development and new ideas, businesses become stagnant and fail to successfully compete in the market. Competitor monitoring services aim to survey and analyse changes in the market. Within a single business, anything from a pricing structure change, a new product line, the removal of old products or new ways of marketing can have an affect on how other businesses in the same market perform.
Monitoring change in your closest competitors gives the opportunity to choose to take action, whether that be defensive action, or offensive action - change for the better, whatever that change may need to be.
A Little Bit of Etiquette
Competitor monitoring, while effective and empowering, should also be discreet. It is one business area that must be tactful in its own endeavours and seek to produce results without being detected. If your competitors are aware that you are monitoring them professionally, this could be counter-productive to the process. It is also important to state that competitor monitoring is not an underhand practice either. Information that is collected as part of competitor monitoring is openly available for all to see in the first place. A good competitor monitoring service will just ensure that this information is collated and communicated effectively.