If you don't know what everyone else is doing than how are you supposed to know how to do it better than them?

There are very few industries that are dominated completely by a single company. Unless you're about to release something never before seen by man, odds are you're going to have plenty of competition to deal with.

The first thing any new company needs to do is check out the competition to see how they're doing it. You can't hope to improve upon something you don't know anything about, and improve upon it is exactly what you need to do.

To the new business owner you're competing against a company that's been around for longer than you have. They already have a customer base established and they already have a certain amount of name recognition with the general public. This is why you need to improve upon them if you have any hope of stealing business away from them.

The first way to understand them is to look at their advertisements. Get a hold of their trifold brochures or any other kinds of advertisements that you can. If they use flyer printing, pick up every flyer they've done that you can. Pay attention to the type of marketing that they use. Odds are if they're using a lot of trifold brochures than you're going to have to do the same. This isn't going to be a given, but it's a good starting point.

Once you have their advertisements look at the headlines they use, the images they choose, and the layouts. Ask yourself what it is that you like about the ads, and why it is that you like them. From there you can begin to decide on how to make your own advertisements better.

Going beyond just the advertising, try to find any other details about the company you can. If they use newsletter printing get a hold of one of those newsletters to learn as much as you can about their inner workings.

The kind of information they give out about their employees, their sales, to even the kinds of discounts they offer. Look at every possible way they have of drawing in their customers.

If they don't offer discounts often, figure out why, and decide if discounts are a good way of making your business more enticing. Just because they aren't doing something, that doesn't mean you shouldn't either, unless you can figure out why they aren't doing it.

After you have enough information gathered you should be in a prime position to decide on all the different ways to go about making your business better than theirs. It might be making better use of newsletter printing or creating better designs with your flyer printing. No matter what conclusion you draw, it should be based on the proper research.

It isn't easy starting out against a marketplace filled with businesses that have been playing the game for longer than you. Just be sure to understand what you're getting into, and be prepared to up the ante against them by improving on their own game.