Ask any owner who their competitors are and they will name two or three. The cafe across the road. The plumber who turns up on the same community Facebook group. They are usually half right.
The businesses you worry about are not always the ones taking your calls. Your real competition is whoever a customer sees beside you when they search, and that list is often longer, and stranger, than the one in your head.
In this article
- 1. Why customers, not owners, decide who your competitors are
- 2. How your Google categories decide which list you are in
- 3. How Marketbase draws your market, and your closest competition
Customers decide who your competitors are
The mistake runs both ways. Some owners think too big, worrying about a firm in Auckland that no Tauranga customer will ever ring. Others think too small, watching the shop next door and missing the three businesses two streets over that Google shows to the same people.
A customer does not know your history or who you bump into on job sites. They type "plumber Invercargill" and choose from what appears. Some of those names you know. Some opened last year, some work from home with no shopfront, and some are larger outfits with a local listing.
Key point
Your competitors are the businesses Google puts beside yours. Not the ones you think about most. The list a customer chooses from is the only list that costs you work.
Find them the way a customer would
Open a private browsing window on your phone and search your trade plus your town. Then search the specific jobs you want more of ("hot water cylinder replacement Dunedin", "gel nails Riccarton"). Run the same searches from two or three suburbs, because the map list changes with where the customer is standing.
Write down every business that turns up more than once. That is your real field. Most owners find at least one name they have never heard of near the top, and at least one business they worried about sitting well down the list.
Tip
Ask your last five customers how they found you. If three say "I searched on Google", the map list is where you win or lose work. If they say "my neighbour told me", reviews carry that word of mouth onto the page.
Your Google categories decide which list you are in
Google files every business under categories, a primary one and optional extras, chosen in your Google listing. Those categories decide which searches you can appear in. A builder filed under "construction company" shows up for different searches than one filed under "builder" or "kitchen remodeler".
This is where a lot of owners lose work without knowing it. If your primary category does not match the job customers search for, you are competing in the wrong list. Check yours in your Google listing settings, compare it with the businesses at the top of your searches, and add secondary categories for the other work you do.
Picture this
A painter in Dunedin has always measured himself against the two firms he sees on job sites. When he searches "painter Dunedin" on his phone from three suburbs, 14 businesses turn up between them.
The three near the top of every search are names he has never heard of. All three have more reviews than him, real photos of finished jobs, and "painter" as their primary category, where his listing says "contractor". The two firms he worried about sit below him.
How Marketbase draws your market
A Marketbase market is a trade in a city: beauty businesses in Christchurch, plumbers in Hamilton, accountants in Wellington. Every business Google lists in that city with matching categories is counted in it, and every one has been checked before you arrive. You do not pick your competitors, and nobody can hand-pick a flattering set.
Where a business does two kinds of work, it sits in two markets, one for each. Market size varies a lot. A plumber in a small town competes in a market of six, a dentist in central Auckland in a market of 40 or more, and being seventh of eight is as real a gap as being 70th of 300.
Your real competition is whoever a customer sees beside you when they search.
Your closest competition, and the ones you add
A whole city is the right frame for "where do I stand", but too wide for "who is a customer weighing me against right now". So your roadmap measures you against a tighter set: a handful of businesses nearest you in the same line of work, introduced at the top of the page. Every report can also narrow its market list to the businesses within 1.5 km of you.
If there is a business you know you lose jobs to, add it. Businesses you add to keep an eye on are counted first in your closest competition on the roadmap, wherever they are. The aim is not a feud with one rival. It is knowing what the businesses winning your calls have done that you have not, and sorting that.
Start finding your real field
5 minutes today
- Check your primary category in your Google listing
- Search your trade plus your town in a private window and note the top five
30 minutes this week
- Repeat the search from two other suburbs and for the job you want more of
- Compare the categories of the businesses at the top with yours
Ongoing this month
- Ask new customers how they found you and keep a tally
- Pick the one thing the top three share that you lack, and sort it
Where Marketbase comes in
Searching by hand shows you what one phone sees on one evening. Marketbase has already checked every business in your trade and city, so your free report shows your place among all of them and what is working and what could move for you.
Seven days' free access adds the how for every finding, in order, measured against your closest competition. Sort it yourself, or we'll do it for you. Find your business to see your free report.