Taking a Hard Look at Your Competition
How often are you really looking at your competition in the marketplace? This isn’t just about being aware that they exist but understanding what the other companies are doing and how you can ultimately improve upon them.
In order to get the best picture you have to be aware of everything that they’re planning and what kind of impact it’s going to have, along with what they’re doing that their customers like. You can’t expect to pull anyone away if you don’t know what it is that they like about the other company. You’ll have to consider too if you’re actually able to pull their customers away, or if your company just isn’t set up to compete in that particular area.
You don’t have to match all of their strengths in order to succeed, though that is one strategy that companies sometimes use in order to best their competition. You can also look to their weaknesses instead to find chinks in their armor and figure out what it is that their customers aren’t happy about, and how you can improve upon it.
Part of this too has to do with looking at their marketing and what kind of success they’re having with it. They might be using a lot of one particular type of marketing, but don’t think that this is by default a sign that this type of marketing is the best you can do. Remember that your point isn’t to match them but to improve upon whatever it is they’re doing and figure out a way to increase your sales in the process.
They might be sending out a lot of postcards to new customers, so take this information and figure out what is good about it and what can be done better. The direct mailing part might be something you’ll want to use as well, but instead of making postcards for new customers you instead create some custom greeting cards. You’re improving on their tactic while also taking advantage of what they were doing that was successful.
Your custom greeting cards are better designed to attract new customers, increasing your chance of sales and allowing you to pull ahead of your competitors.
Take this idea and apply it to everything you can about your business and theirs. You need to figure out what is working, what will work for you, and how you can change things to better suit your particular business. You might find a number of specific things they offer you can emulate, but change to suit what your company is. The best way to pull this off is to improve on their offer, so rather than copy them you’re offering people something even better.
You can’t expect to get to the top of your industry if you aren’t watching the competition, and figuring out how you can do things better.
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