Before you begin developing your competitive strategies, you need to do a little bit of study of your competitors
. You need to first find out as much as you can about your competition. Resources are probably limited so it is best to focus within 500m of your daycare and expanding wider if/when you have more resources.
There are a number of ways in which you can achieve this:
- Speak to your current customers as, chances are, they would also have checked out your competition before signing with you
- Speak to your prospects as chances are they would also have checked out the other daycare
- Speak to your staff
- Speak to your suppliers
- Observation
You should be gathering as much information on them as possible. Here are some of the things that you may wish to find out:
- Estimated number of children that they have or their capacity can accommodate
- Where did they obtain their curriculum
- What are the daycare services that they offer
- What are their operating hours
- Any special daycare facilities
- What are their daycare charges
- How often do they promote their daycare services
- The number and qualifications of their staff
- Are their customers happy with their services
Once you are done gathering all the information, you then need to evaluate and identify what are their weaknesses and how your daycare compares with theirs before you can think about how you can draw their customers over.
