Look at your rivals to learn, not to copy: a plain checklist

Choose three to five rivals

Pick businesses your customers genuinely compare you with: the shop two streets away, the clinic they also phoned, the online seller they also considered. Skip the giant brands you would never be mistaken for.

Add one rival of a different kind, such as an online seller if you run a local shop. It shows you another way of doing the same job.

Six things to look at

• Offer: what they sell, who it is for, what is included and what is left out.
• Pages: which pages exist, how each service is explained, and whether there are FAQs or pages for each place they serve.
• Tone: formal or friendly, plain or full of jargon.
• Reviews: what customers praise and what they complain about.
• Local presence: their Google Business Profile, categories, photos, hours and how they answer reviews.
• Ease: how simple it is to call, book or ask a question.

Read reviews for patterns, not drama

One angry review tells you little. The same complaint appearing again and again tells you what the market is missing. Read the praise as well as the complaints, and write down the customers' own words. They show how real people describe the need.

Be fair while you read. The aim is to learn, not to run anybody down.

Keep notes in a simple table

One row per rival is enough. Paper works as well as a spreadsheet.

• Name and area of the rival.
• Their offer in one line.
• What they do well.
• Where they fall short.
• A gap you might fill.
• When you last looked.

Find a gap, not a template

A gap is something customers want that nobody explains well. It might be a question that appears in reviews but on nobody's website, a service no rival describes in detail, a neighbourhood nobody writes about, or slow replies that every rival is criticised for.

Then ask whether you can truly fill that gap. A gap you cannot honestly fill is only an idea.

Copy nothing

Do not copy a rival's words, photos, claims or offers. Their claims may not be true for you, and you could not back them up. Pages that repeat what already exists also tend to add little for the reader.

Describe your own business with your own examples and proof. If you feel the urge to copy, ask what a customer would gain from reading the same thing a second time.

How often to look

Once a season is often enough for a local business, plus an extra look when something big changes, such as a new rival opening nearby. Put the reminder in your calendar, because this job is easy to forget.

Let a tool watch the dull part

AI Marketing Master has a competitor watch. You add up to five competitor websites, and it reads their public pages, respects each site's robots.txt, checks daily and lists what changed: titles, descriptions, headings, pages added or removed, and page speed. You still do the thinking about what the change means.