Why Every Small Business Should Be Watching the Competition
Do you know what your competitors are up to right now? Not a rough guess based on something you overheard at a networking event, but real, current knowledge of their pricing, their offers, their reviews and what they’re posting on social media?
If the honest answer is “not really,” you’re in good company. Most small business owners are too busy running the day-to-day to keep tabs on the competition. And I guess you’re probably thinking but “I’m my own business, what does it matter what my competitors are doing?” In some ways, I agree; listen to your customers, do what you love and that should result in a successful business. But which of us doesn’t want to pick up some ideas or maybe learn something new?
Keeping a watching brief on your competition is really useful for lots of reasons and it doesn’t have to mean hours of research or expensive software. Done right, it’s a habit that takes minutes a week and can genuinely shape smarter marketing decisions, sharper pricing and a stronger competitive edge.
Why Bother Watching the Competition?
Competitor monitoring (sometimes called competitive intelligence or competitor analysis) simply means keeping an eye on what similar businesses in your market are doing. It’s not about copying them or obsessing over every move; it’s about staying informed enough to make good decisions.
Done consistently, it helps you to:
- Spot gaps in the market that your competitors haven’t filled yet.
- Benchmark your pricing so you know you’re neither underselling yourself nor pricing yourself out of the running.
- Catch trends early, whether that’s a new service everyone’s suddenly offering or a seasonal promotion worth borrowing ideas from.
- Avoid nasty surprises, like discovering a rival has undercut you on a big tender or launched a service that overlaps with yours.
- Get inspiration for your own content, offers and customer experience.
For a small business with limited marketing budget, that kind of insight is genuinely valuable and it costs nothing but a little time. (If you’d like a refresher on the fundamentals more broadly first, my quick guide to marketing for small businesses is a good place to start.)
Choosing Which Competitors to Watch
Before you start following anyone, it’s worth being a bit strategic about who makes the list. Pick two or three direct, realistic competitors: businesses of a similar size, in your local area or niche, genuinely fighting for the same customers as you. These are the ones whose pricing, offers and reviews will actually be useful to benchmark against week to week.
It’s also worth adding one aspirational competitor to the mix, perhaps a bigger or more established business a step or two ahead of you. You’re not benchmarking yourself against them so much as watching for ideas: the kind of content, positioning or customer experience you might grow into.
A word of warning on LinkedIn specifically: the free version of LinkedIn only lets you follow one company page as a “competitor” via its built-in tracking feature (Premium accounts allow several). If you’re using that feature, choose your single most important direct competitor for it and simply follow the others’ company pages and key people the normal way instead, which have no such limits. For everything else, Google Alerts, newsletters, Google Business Profile, Facebook, Instagram, there’s no cap at all, so don’t be shy about keeping a slightly wider net there. The more (relevant) data points you have, the clearer the picture.
The Five-Minute Habit: Getting Started for Free
You don’t need a subscription to anything fancy to get going. Here are some genuinely easy first steps.
Set up a Google Alert. Head to google.com/alerts, type in a competitor’s business name (and perhaps their owner’s name too), and Google will email you whenever they’re mentioned online. It takes about two minutes to set up and then quietly does the work for you in the background. (You could also create a Google Alert based on a wider search term to – say – see what’s being talked about in your industry more generally too; you can set up as many alerts as you like!)
If you’re not sure how to set-up a Google Alert, watch my 3 minute video here:
Follow them on LinkedIn. Find your competitors’ company pages and personal profiles, hit follow and turn on notifications for their posts if you can. LinkedIn is where a lot of B2B businesses announce new services, share wins and post job vacancies (a good early sign of what they’re planning next).
Not sure how to follow a competitor on LinkedIn? Another 3 minute video to show you, here:
Sign up to their newsletter. If they have one, get on the list. There’s no better way to see exactly what offers and messaging they’re sending straight to customers’ inboxes.
Check their Google Business Profile and reviews. Their star rating, response times and what customers are saying will tell you a huge amount about how they’re perceived and where they might be falling short, which could be your opportunity.
Have a scroll through their social media. A regular five-minute look at their Facebook, Instagram or TikTok will show you what’s landing with their audience and what isn’t.
When You’re Ready to Level Up
Once the habit’s bedded in, there are tools that can do more of the heavy lifting if you want to invest a little. Platforms like SEMrush, Ahrefs and SimilarWeb can show you where a competitor’s website traffic is coming from and which keywords they’re ranking for (handy to know alongside how SEO has changed in general). BuzzSumo and Sprout Social are handy for tracking which of their social posts are getting the most engagement. None of these are essential for most small businesses starting out but they’re worth knowing about as you grow.
Turning Insight into Action
The real value of competitor monitoring isn’t the information itself, it’s what you do with it. If a rival’s reviews mention slow response times, make speed part of your own promise. If their pricing has crept up, there might be an opening to win price-conscious customers. If they’re getting great engagement on video content, perhaps it’s time you tried it too.
Of course, always keep it ethical. Everything above involves publicly available information; there’s no need (and it isn’t appropriate) to misrepresent yourself to access a competitor’s private data or customer lists.
Ready to Start?
Pick two or three direct competitors today, set up a Google Alert for each and follow them on LinkedIn. That’s it. Within a few weeks, you’ll have a genuinely useful picture of your market, built entirely from five minutes here and there.
If you’d like help turning that insight into a marketing plan that actually plays to your strengths, get in touch. I’d love to help, whether that’s a one-off competitor and marketplace analysis or ongoing support keeping you one step ahead.