The most revealing question in our Growth Diagnostic isn’t about marketing. It’s about self-awareness.
Every business owner who completes our Growth Diagnostic answers one question that appears almost too simple.
“Who are your competitors?”
Most people answer it in seconds.
Ironically, it’s often one of the most revealing answers on the entire form.
Not because they don’t know their industry.
Because many businesses unknowingly confuse their competitors with their aspirations.
There’s a huge difference.
And getting it wrong can lead to years of poor marketing decisions.
Competitors vs Aspirations
Let’s imagine a local independent bike shop.
When asked who their competitors are, they reply:
Trek.
Or perhaps…
Halfords.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with admiring those businesses.
There’s plenty to learn from them.
But are they really your competitors?
If a customer walks into your town looking for a bike today, who are they genuinely comparing you with?
The independent shop five miles away?
The specialist dealer in the next town?
Or one of the largest cycling retailers in the country?
Those are very different questions.
The same happens in almost every industry.
A family-run accountancy practice compares itself with one of the Big Four.
A regional skip hire company benchmarks itself against a national operator with depots across the UK.
A £2 million turnover business measures itself against a £200 million organisation.
There’s nothing wrong with ambition.
In fact, ambition is healthy.
But your competitors and your aspirations are rarely the same businesses.
One represents where you are today.
The other represents where you want to be tomorrow.
Confusing the two is one of the quickest ways to build the wrong strategy.
Why It Matters
Once you’ve identified the wrong competitors, everything else begins to drift.
You compare your website.
You compare your branding.
You compare your content.
You compare your advertising.
You compare your social media.
Eventually, you start copying businesses operating under completely different conditions.
Different budgets.
Different teams.
Different brand awareness.
Different economies of scale.
Without realising it, you’re trying to win a race that was never yours to begin with.
That’s not strategy.
It’s frustration disguised as ambition.
Most agencies sell activity. We sell clarity.
If this resonates, you probably don’t need tactics, you need a decision framework.
The Danger of Benchmarking Against the Wrong Businesses
When you compare yourself with businesses operating on a completely different scale, almost everything becomes distorted.
Their marketing budget is different.
Their team is different.
Their resources are different.
Their reputation has often been built over decades.
Their customer base is larger.
Their buying power is stronger.
Their margins may even allow them to make decisions you simply can’t.
Yet many businesses look at them and think:
“That’s what we should be doing.”
So they copy the website.
They copy the messaging.
They copy the content.
They copy the social media.
They copy the advertising.
Sometimes they even copy the keywords.
Without ever asking the most important question.
Should we?
Because what works for a national business spending hundreds of thousands of pounds each year on marketing isn’t automatically the right strategy for a regional business investing a few thousand pounds a month.
That’s not failure.
That’s reality.
The Cost of the Wrong Comparison
Imagine you’re climbing a mountain.
You believe you’re halfway to the summit.
In reality, you’ve only just left the car park.
The route you choose.
The equipment you pack.
The pace you set.
The expectations you have.
They’re all based on the wrong starting point.
Business works exactly the same way.
If you don’t honestly understand where you are today, every decision you make afterwards becomes harder.
Not because the decisions are wrong.
Because they’re built on the wrong assumption.
Strategy only works when it starts with reality.
The Agency Question
This is where I think agencies have a responsibility.
It’s easy to tell a client what they want to hear.
“Yes, we can outrank them.”
“Yes, we can build something like that.”
“Yes, we can target those keywords.”
The harder conversation is asking whether those are the right businesses to compare yourself with in the first place.
Sometimes they are.
More often, they aren’t.
That’s why one of the questions I’d rather answer is this:
Who are we actually taking customers from?
Because that’s your real competition.
Not the business you’d like to become in ten years’ time.
The business your prospective customer is choosing between today.
That’s the benchmark that matters.
The Question Most Reports Never Answer
Marketing reports usually tell you what you’ve done.
Traffic increased.
Rankings improved.
Clicks are up.
But very few answer the question every managing director is really asking.
Are we becoming stronger than the businesses we’re genuinely competing against?
That’s a completely different conversation.
Because business has never been played in isolation.
You aren’t competing against last month.
You aren’t competing against your own ambitions.
You’re competing against the businesses trying to win exactly the same customers as you.
Until you identify who those businesses really are, it’s almost impossible to measure meaningful progress.
You’re simply comparing numbers without understanding the race you’re actually running.
Be Honest About Today. Be Ambitious About Tomorrow.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to become the biggest business in your market.
Nothing wrong with admiring the brands that have built incredible reputations.
Nothing wrong with setting ambitious goals.
In fact, every successful business started exactly the same way.
The mistake isn’t ambition.
The mistake is building today’s strategy around tomorrow’s business.
If you think like a market leader before you’ve earned the right, you’ll often make market-leading mistakes.
You’ll overspend.
You’ll chase the wrong opportunities.
You’ll measure yourself against businesses operating in completely different circumstances.
Most importantly, you’ll become frustrated when your results don’t match your expectations.
Not because your marketing is poor.
Because your benchmark was unrealistic from the very beginning.
The Best Businesses Know Where They Stand
One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that the strongest businesses aren’t always the most confident.
They’re usually the most self-aware.
They know what they’re good at.
They know where they’re weak.
They know who they’re taking business from today.
And they know who they want to be competing with five years from now.
They don’t confuse those two things.
That clarity allows them to make better decisions.
To invest with confidence.
To grow consistently.
And to avoid wasting time chasing strategies that were never right for them in the first place.
Why This Matters to Us
One of the first things we establish during a Growth Diagnostic isn’t your marketing plan.
It’s your reality.
Who are your customers really comparing you with?
Who is winning the work you want today?
Who do you genuinely need to outperform over the next twelve months?
Only when we understand that can we begin making sensible marketing decisions.
Because every recommendation that follows is built on that foundation.
Get the starting point wrong…
…and everything else becomes harder than it needs to be.
One Final Thought
Imagine two business owners.
The first spends every day worrying about businesses they’ll probably never compete with.
The second focuses on becoming the obvious choice over the handful of businesses their customers are actually comparing them against.
Which one do you think is more likely to grow?
Exactly.
Growth isn’t about pretending to be the market leader.
It’s about making enough good decisions that, one day, you become one.
Froogle Principle
Be honest about where you are today.
Be ambitious about where you want to be tomorrow.
Just don’t confuse the two.
That’s where good strategy starts.
And it’s usually where sustainable growth begins.
