Companies Who Compete: Insights for Identifying Industry Trends Before They Happen

It is never that easy to be a trendsetter but if you can find some ways to stay ahead of the game and predict which new products and services are likely to prove a hit with customers, as well as tapping into changing sentiment so that you can evolve accordingly, then you are likely to remain extremely competitive.

Whether you are searching out new details about coating equipment or reading the latest consumer surveys, finding ways to predict industry trends before anyone else, will almost certainly allow your business to flourish.

Industry research often pays off

It may be one of the simplest and perhaps most obvious ways of identifying and recognizing industry trends, but reading research reports and press releases, will often allow you to find something that could turn out to be worthwhile data.

You can’t always take everything you read at face value perhaps, and maybe if you are reading about an innovation that has just been revealed, you might think that this may not constitute staying ahead of a trend.

However, if you notice that the industry chatter is focused on one particular area, this at least is revealing a trend and does allow you the opportunity to develop an idea and adopt it for your own business, as not everyone who thinks of something first, is always the one to ultimately prosper.

Customers are a good source

Many industries and markets have a strong tendency to evolve at a rapid pace these days, which is largely down to better forms of communication, through social media channels and other modern tools that allow you to gauge consumer trends far more quickly than you could have done in the past.

You will often find that customers will go online and air their views about either your company or a rival business in your industry. This sort of valuable insight into what customers are thinking and saying about a product or service, can give you a useful heads-up about what is trending and where future demand might lie.

Not everything you read from customers will be positive, but that is the nature of the social media beast. This is still useful feedback and allows you to maybe see where a rival is failing its customers or where there is a demand that is not currently being satisfied.

Cast your research net wider

It is perfectly understandable for any business to focus their attention on what their competitors are doing, but there is plenty of merit in casting your research net a bit wider than that, so that you might be able to spot some trends that could be adapted for your own business purposes.

If you take a look at what some of your indirect competitors are doing, where there is an element of crossover, it can often give you a very useful insight into what customers are thinking and wanting, allowing you to adopt your style of approach or even update your product lines, as a result of identifying a trend that you can potentially take advantage of.

Using analytics

The wealth of data that is now being collected on a daily basis thanks to our online shopping and communication habits, means that you can tap into some very powerful real-time data that can show you exactly what is trending right now.

Free resources like Google trends are always worth using, as they show you what topics are trending and you can also use tools like AdWords to pinpoint keywords and queries that people are entering into search engines, which gives you the inside track on what people are actually looking for and are interested in.

Networking works

Even if you have some rivals who are competing in the same space as you, they don’t always have to be your enemy.

There is a lot of merit in networking with a variety of people within your industry as well as a diverse range of useful contacts and advisers, who are often more than willing to have a meaningful conversation about the state of the industry and what is going on in their world.

You can’t expect them to reveal sensitive details or inside information of course, but gaining a perspective from other people within your industry and business in general, about how they see things are going, can often prove to be invaluable.

Whichever way you can identify current trends, gathering up-to-date information and spotting trends before they fully develop, will help you to compete.

Leon Whittaker’s business articles appear around the internet offering up invaluable information for small-medium sized businesses. He writes about all aspects of running, and growing, a business no matter what industry you are in.

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