A competitor launches a new website, starts advertising or publishes a new offer. It is natural to have a look and wonder whether your business should do something similar.
That can be useful research. The important step is working out what you can learn from it before changing your own plans. You can see their website and messaging, but you usually cannot see whether those choices are bringing in profitable work.
A focused review can help you understand the options customers are comparing, spot unanswered questions and find ways to make your own offer clearer.
Choose who to compare
Start with three to five businesses a potential customer might realistically consider alongside yours. Look for similar services, service areas and types of customers.
Include businesses customers mention during sales conversations. You can also look at the alternatives you see when searching for the services you offer, while remembering that a single search is only a snapshot.
A national company with a large marketing team might provide inspiration, but it may have very different budgets, pricing and capacity. Keep those differences in mind when deciding what is relevant to your business.
Choose a purpose for the review, such as improving your service page or making your quote process clearer. That will help you avoid collecting ideas with no decision to make at the end.
Look through a customer's eyes
Imagine you need the service and have never heard of any of these businesses. Visit their websites on your phone and compare how easily you can answer a few basic questions.
- The offer: What do they do, who is it for and which areas do they cover?
- The message: What reasons do they give you to choose them?
- The proof: Do they show relevant projects, detailed reviews or useful information about the team?
- The cost: Can you understand the pricing, what is included or how to get a quote?
- The next step: Is it clear how to enquire, what information you need and what happens afterwards?
Read a selection of reviews for recurring themes. Customers might repeatedly mention communication, reliability, speed or helpful advice. Those themes are worth comparing with what your own customers tell you.
You can assess whether a contact form is easy to find and understand without sending a fake enquiry. Keep your notes about what you can actually observe.
Separate observations from assumptions
“They have an ad for this service” is an observation. “That ad must be making them money” is an assumption.
The same applies to a busy social feed, a polished website or a prominent search result. Those things are visible. Their enquiry quality, conversion rate, delivery costs and profit usually are not.
Write down the observation and the question it raises separately. For example:
- Observation: A competitor publishes a starting price. Question: Would clearer pricing help our customers decide whether to enquire?
- Observation: Their service page includes photos of completed jobs. Question: Could relevant examples make our own service easier to understand?
- Observation: They advertise a service we offer. Question: Does our own enquiry and sales data support putting more budget behind that service?
This gives you something to investigate. It does not turn a competitor's choice into evidence that you should make the same one.
Find a useful gap to fill
Look for things customers need that are hard to find across the websites you reviewed. Perhaps nobody explains what a quote includes, how an installation works or whether a particular type of job is suitable.
Then check those gaps against your own customer conversations. A missing detail is worth addressing when it helps someone make a decision.
For example, if customers regularly ask how long they will be without power during electrical work, an honest explanation of what affects the timing could be more helpful than another general claim about great service.
You might also find a strength you already have but barely mention: experience with a particular job type, clear communication, ongoing support or a straightforward booking process. Explain it specifically and show evidence where you can.
Our guide to understanding what customers care about can help you check which ideas matter to the people you want to reach.
Choose an improvement to test
Finish the review by choosing one or two improvements that fit your business goals, budget and ability to deliver. You might clarify a service page, add relevant project examples or explain the steps after someone requests a quote.
Use your own words, examples and promises. The useful lesson from a competitor's clear pricing page is that customers may need more cost information; your own page should reflect how you actually price and deliver the work.
Decide what would make the change worthwhile. That might mean more suitable enquiries, fewer repeated questions or more people completing a booking. Keep a note of when you made the change and review the results in context.
For advertising decisions, use your own lead quality, sales and costs to guide spending. Being above a particular competitor is not a useful goal on its own if those clicks do not bring in work you want.
A periodic review is usually enough to keep your ideas current. You could set aside half an hour each quarter, with an extra check when you launch a service or change your offer.
A simple competitor-review checklist
Use this to keep your next review focused:
- Choose a specific question or decision you want the review to help with.
- Select three to five relevant businesses customers might compare with yours.
- Review their offer, messaging, proof, pricing information and enquiry process.
- Record what you can see separately from what you are assuming.
- Check possible gaps against your own customer feedback.
- Choose one or two improvements you can deliver well.
- Agree how you will judge the result and when you will review it.
The aim is to come away with a clearer decision for your business. Your competitors can give you useful questions to ask; your customers and results help you decide what to do with the answers.
