The line I hear most in a first meeting with a small company: "We have no competitors, we're the only ones doing this."
It sounds good in a pitch deck and it is a real danger in practice, because it means you do not know who is taking your customer's money instead of you.
A competitor is not who resembles you, it is who solves the same problem
The customer does not have a category in his head called "your industry." He has a problem and a budget. Anything that solves that problem in any way is a competitor, even if it looks nothing like your business.
Example: if you have an app that helps companies organise tasks, your competitor is not only other apps — it is also a WhatsApp group, an Excel file, and an employee chasing people by phone. Those are all "solutions" to the problem, and most of them are free.
If you sell a course, your competitor is YouTube. If you sell design services, your competitor is a ready-made template. If you sell healthy food, your competitor is cooking at home.
The most dangerous competitor of all: nothing
The biggest competitor of any small business is the customer's decision to do nothing. Stay as they are, postpone, say next year.
That is not laziness, it is logic: the current situation is known, and any change carries risk and effort. To beat this competitor you will not compare yourself to anyone — you will make the cost of staying the same visible.
"Every month that passes without doing this costs you X" moves people more than "we are better than company Y."
How do you find your real competitors?
Do not look at the market from above. Look from where the customer stands:
- Ask your existing customers. "Before you came to us, how were you handling this?" The answer is your real competitor, and it is usually not a company.
- Ask the ones who didn't buy. "What did you end up doing instead?" People answer that question more often than you would expect.
- Search in the customer's words, not yours. Type the problem into Google the way a customer would describe it and see what comes up. That is the market you are actually in.
- Look at the customer's invoices. Where is his money going right now in this area? That is the slot you are competing for.
What does it mean when your competitor is a spreadsheet?
It means your marketing message is wrong. If you are comparing yourself to a company like you while you are really competing against an old habit, all your talk about features is wasted.
In that case your first job is to make the problem visible, and only then present your solution. Not the other way round.
A direct competitor selling something different
This happens a lot in services. You might be a marketing company whose real competitor is a salesperson the client could hire on a salary. Both solve the same problem: how do I get customers.
The customer compares you on budget, outcome and risk — not on job title. And if that is not in your thinking, you will lose deals without understanding where they went.
Make tracking a habit, not a project
Do not do a competitor analysis once a year in a big document nobody opens. Build a small habit: once a month, take half an hour and look at one competitor's offer, one message they sent their customers, and one price if it is public.
The big document is out of date in two months. The monthly half hour keeps working.
Follow competitors to understand the market, not to copy it
There is a big difference between knowing how the market is moving and living with your eyes on someone else. The second is exhausting and leads nowhere.
Keep your tracking guided by a question: what is changing in what customers ask for? If three competitors have started talking about the same thing, that is usually not them copying each other — that is a demand signal.
Competition is not always a problem
Competitors existing means there is a real market and people are paying. The hardest position is not finding competitors — it is finding yourself alone, because then you are the one paying to teach the market that this problem even has a solution, and that is the most expensive kind of marketing.
- If there is a lot of competition: the opportunity is in focus. Pick a narrower slice and serve it better.
- If there is no competition: ask why. The market may not exist, or others may have tried and failed. Both need checking before you spend.
- If your competitor is far bigger: that can work in your favour, because they are paying to educate the market and you benefit from the awareness they built.
Three questions to ask every new customer
The easiest competitor research is talking to your customers, and the best time is the first week after they sign — everything is still fresh:
- "When and why did you decide to do something about this?" The answer tells you what triggers the market.
- "Who else did you talk to?" That gives you your real competitors, not the ones you imagine.
- "What made you choose us?" That answer is your next marketing message, written in the customer's own words.
After ten customers you will have a sharper picture than any market report you could buy.
And once you know them, do not talk about them
This knowledge is for you, not for the customer. Anyone who spends time listing competitors' flaws looks, to a customer, like someone not confident in himself.
Use it indirectly: in the words you choose to describe your work, in the questions you ask, and in the things you add to the proposal because you know nobody else does them.
In short
There is no business without competition, but there are plenty of businesses that cannot see theirs. A competitor is any other way the customer solves his problem — including doing nothing.
The moment you know who you are really competing with, you will find your message, your price and your offer all need adjusting — and it will be an adjustment based on reality rather than assumption.
This is part of a series on pricing and competition — which also covers direct versus indirect competitors, and how to decide whether to copy a competitor.