Understand your competitors
Introduction
Knowing who your competitors are, and what they are offering, can help you to make your products, services and marketing stand out. It will enable you to set your prices competitively and help you to respond to rival marketing campaigns with your own initiatives.
You can use this knowledge to create marketing strategies that take advantage of your competitors' weaknesses, and improve your own business performance. You can also assess any threats posed by both new entrants to your market and current competitors. This knowledge will help you to be realistic about how successful you can be.
This guide explains how to analyse who your competitors are, how to research what they're doing and how to act on the information you gain.
Subjects covered in this guide
- Introduction
- Who are your competitors?
- What you need to know about your competitors
- Learning about your competitors
- Hearing about your competitors
- How to act on the competitor information you get

Actions
- Marketing e-course on the learndirect business website - Opens in a new window
- Download a ten-minute competitor research guide from the Chartered Institute of Marketing website (PDF, 159K) - Opens in a new window
- Manage your personal list of starting-up tasks with our Business start-up organiser
- View local and national events linked to this topic
- View grants and support schemes linked to this topic



