The Hopla! team
Comparing your shop with others takes neither software nor a consultant. A phone, Google Maps, TikTok and a quarter of an hour will do. The aim isn't to know everything about your competitors: it's to find the one thing that will make the difference this month.
Who your real competitors are
Your competitor is the business your customer chooses instead of you. For a neighbourhood bakery, that's the one five minutes' walk away, not the chain twenty kilometres down the road on a retail park. Three criteria are enough: the same trade, the same customers, a distance people cover on foot.
The test takes five minutes. From behind your counter, open Google Maps and simply type in your trade: “bakery”, “hairdresser”, “chip shop”. Note the first three businesses in the same trade. Run the same search a few streets away, then again on a Saturday: the ones that keep coming up are your real competitors.
That ranking is no accident. In its help for business owners, Google explains that its local results are based on relevance, distance and prominence. Distance is calculated from where the person searching is: there's nothing you can do about it. Prominence takes into account, among other things, the number of reviews and ratings, and the more reviews and good ratings you have, the higher you climb. That's the part you can work on.
The four columns to fill in
Open a note on your phone, write down your name and those of your three competitors, then fill in four columns. Allow ten minutes for all four businesses. Start with yourself: that's often where the first surprise lies.
1. The Google rating
Always read it together with the number of reviews: a perfect rating from a handful of reviews is less reassuring than a very good rating from hundreds. In BrightLocal's local consumer review survey (February 2026, carried out in the United States), 68% of respondents say they only use a business rated 4 stars or more.
2. The number of reviews
This is often the most visible gap, and one of the easiest to close. In the same survey, 47% avoid a business with fewer than 20 reviews.
3. Recent reviews and replies
Sort the reviews by “Newest”. How many have they had this month, and how many have you? Do they reply, how quickly, in what tone? Again according to BrightLocal, 74% of respondents look for reviews less than three months old: a competitor with lots of old reviews and few recent ones is less solid than they look. Read their one-, two- and three-star reviews too. What their customers hold against them is exactly what you can do better.
4. TikTok and Instagram
For each account, note the number of followers and the date of the latest post. An account with a big following that has been silent since the summer doesn't carry much weight. On TikTok, the view count is shown on every video: find the most viewed one and note its subject in three words, not its text. This is no small detail: in Belgium, TikTok reaches 4.03 million adults, or 42.5% of over-18s, and Instagram 53.7% (DataReportal, Digital 2026 Belgium, audiences as reported by the platforms).
As a bonus, the Meta Ad Library is public and free: type in a competitor's name to see the ads they're currently running on Facebook and Instagram.
A completed comparison, as an example
Example
A neighbourhood bakery in Namur and its three competitors within walking distance. Businesses and figures made up for the example.
You: 4.7 out of 5, 38 reviews, 2 this month, hardly ever a reply. TikTok: 150 followers, last video five weeks ago. Instagram: 640 followers, last post ten days ago.
Competitor A, 300 metres away: 4.4 out of 5, 212 reviews, 9 this month, replies to all of them within two days. TikTok: 2,300 followers, one video a week, the most viewed shows the bread coming out of the oven at 6 a.m. Instagram: 1,900 followers, posted yesterday.
Competitor B, 600 metres away: 4.1 out of 5, 95 reviews, 3 this month, never replies. Several recent reviews complain about the Sunday morning queue. No TikTok. Instagram: 850 followers, last post two months ago.
Competitor C, 900 metres away: 4.8 out of 5, 64 reviews, 4 this month, replies to all of them. TikTok: 410 followers, last video three weeks ago. Instagram: 1,200 followers, posted four days ago. Closed on Sundays.
What you take away from it
A comparison is no use if it stays on your phone. Look for three things, in this order, then keep just one for the month.
A review gap to close
A better rating but fewer reviews than the others? Your project for the month is right there: ask every customer for a review, every day, without sorting the happy ones from the unhappy ones. The method is in our article on Google reviews.
A video format that works for them
If their most viewed video shows bread coming out of the oven, don't remake their video: borrow the format with your product, your gesture, your light. What works is the idea (the moment when “it comes out”), not their framing. Here's how to remake a TikTok video that works without copying it.
An opening nobody has taken
A complaint that keeps coming up at theirs and that you already solve, opening hours nobody covers, a subject nobody films. That's often where the best idea is hiding, because it answers a need that customers have already put down in black and white.
Example
In the Namur comparison, the bakery has the second-best rating, but 38 reviews against 212 for A. The format that works for A is bread coming out of the oven: she can film her own, with her bread. And the opening is Sunday morning: C is closed, B has a queue. If it's true for her, a video saying “Sunday morning, warm bread, no queue” speaks to both their customers. For October, she keeps just one action: reviews, because that's the biggest gap.
What not to do
The traps
Copying. Their photos and videos belong to them: reusing them, even cropped, means using someone else's work. And a customer who sees the same video twice remembers the first one.
Running them down. In Belgium, comparative advertising is governed by Article VI.17 of the Code of Economic Law: objective, verifiable, with no disparagement or confusion. The safest course is never to name a competitor, not in a video and not in a reply to a review.
Leaving a review on their listing. For Google, a review from a competitor is a conflict of interest. And posting fake reviews or having them posted is banned in all circumstances by Article VI.100 of the Code of Economic Law.
Cutting your prices on reflex. Before touching your prices, look at the other columns: a gap in reviews or videos can be closed without eating into your margin.
Redo the comparison every quarter
A comparison is a snapshot. Redo it every three months, with the same competitors (plus a new one if one has appeared), and compare it with the previous one: that's how you see whether the gap is closing.
To do this week
- Do the Google Maps test from behind your counter and note down your three real competitors.
- Fill in the four columns, for them and for yourself.
- Read their last ten one-, two- and three-star reviews and circle the complaint that keeps coming up.
- Choose a single action for the month, and write it down where you'll see it every morning.
For your Google Business Profile, your reviews and the videos that go with them, the 2027 survival guide for local shops is free (in French), and easy to read on your phone.
