Why a Competitor Analysis of Local Competition is Essential

If there’s only your salon in your local area then you’re rather lucky, but I’m guessing for most of you there’s a few other salons nearby? You may not always think of doing competitor research for any nearby salon, however it is something that you could really find beneficial to your business. By competitor research I don’t mean walking past all of the salons nearby and trying not to stare too hard but getting a close enough look to pick up some details. Well I mean, you could do that as a starting point, but there’s a lot of better ways that you can gather your research…

Who are they?

The first port-of-call would be to find out exactly who your competition is. The easiest way to do this would be to just do a search on google for salons in your local area. Once you’ve got a list of all of your competitors, you can begin collating information about them, and really start defining who will be your direct competition and who is sort of your secondary competition.

Social Media

Nowadays most salons will use social media, especially Facebook, and this is the perfect place to find out all of the latest news about any of your competitors. This could be their latest deals, any new services, reviews, photos, events, pretty much anything you need to know can be found on there. You could draw inspiration from their posts or their services, they might offer something you’ve never heard of so it might be a good idea to start offering it if its something that you could provide. Perhaps you see that they’re doing a deal on something that you also offer, you should try to match it or even beat it to try get more customers in. The main con of social media is that this also means that if you use social media for your salon, then I would guess that your competitors are also looking at your page, so if you decide to promote an offer on your social media pages then there’s a good chance that they will see it and want to offer something similar, if not better.

Website

Take a look at your competitors’ websites, you should be able to find out a lot of information on here as you would be expecting them to want to showcase their business. Not everyone will have a website, as social media seems to be taking over, but its always good to try and find them. Look at what they’re doing well and if there’s anything that you could take from them to replicate on your own website or just on your social media.

Strengths & Weaknesses

Once you’ve done your research on the website, social media and just through google, make a list of all of the strengths and weaknesses that your competition offer. From this you will be able to see what you could be doing better or what you should try stay away from doing in your salon. Also think about how you can beat their strengths to make sure you stay ahead of your competition.

The last thing you want is for one your customers or potential customers to go to one of your competitors down the street instead of visiting your salon! I hope you can use these tips to help collect some information about your competitors and begin to create some sort of strategy in order to make sure you stay ahead of the competition.

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