How many customer reviews have you received that mentioned a competitor? X business has the better price. X business has better customer service. X business will always have my business. While some businesses ignore these comments, others use them to their benefit. Why measure customer satisfaction and competition? It can be an extremely useful branding strategy.

How is your competitor succeeding?

Instead of getting angered by your competitor?s success, use this information to your advantage. In what ways are they succeeding? Do they connect well with the customer base on social media? Do they have interesting and unique content that brings customers to their webpage and then their in store business? You can learn a lot about success by looking at your competitors. Visit their page and view their marketing materials as a customer. Think about what you like and what you dislike and use that in your own marketing campaign.

Where is your competitor failing?

Failure of a competitor might seem like a success to you. However, unless you do anything with it, it doesn?t help you. Pay attention to the shortcomings of your local competitors. Avoid these same mistakes in your own business campaign. If they are constantly failing at customer satisfaction, pay attention to the specifics of the customer opinions. You can avoid ever making these same mistakes. Also, keep in mind that a typical business only hears from approximately 4% of its dissatisfied customers. Additionally, research shows that it takes about 12 positive experiences to make up for one unresolved negative. Make sure you are learning from these mistakes and focusing on improving your own customer satisfaction.

How are your competitor’s marketing?

Marketing can be extremely successful if planned right. While you are creating your marketing campaign, however, it is likely that you will lose some money. Over time, you will learn which marketing strategies work and which ones do not. Local competitors are likely to have similar customer bases so you can use their marketing success and failures to save you marketing dollars. If your nearest competitor recently aired a TV commercial but received a negative response, you can avoid this high cost. If they are constantly posting deals on social media without much response, you can avoid going this route too. If customer satisfaction seems to improve after your competitor introduced a new product, this could be a part of your future product development.

Focus on current customers rather than stealing customers

It is important to remember that you are not evaluating your competitors to steal their current customers. You are simply doing it to improve your current customer satisfaction levels. It is six to seven times more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to keep a current one. Don?t lose focus on exceptional customer service of your current customers. Instead, make the necessary market evaluations and take care of your customers and you will find that word of mouth does wonders.

Competition can be stressful in the business world. But, it can also be useful, if you use it to your advantage. Paying attention to the marketing and reputation of your competitors can help you to grow your own business. You can cut marketing costs and implement new customer satisfaction strategies. Make sure you are using competitor information to your full advantage.