People’s attitude to other businesses that are in competition to their own is variable. Some adopt the “head in the sand” approach and just ignore competitive businesses, while at the other extreme, some business owners get very concerned about their competition.
The right way to view your competition will depend on the type of business you have. If you have a high volume, low margin product based business then you will need to know what your competition are doing in some reasonable detail. Let’s assume that you are not one of those type of businesses (if you are feel free to drop me an email and I’ll give you some advice separately).
If you have read some of my other blogs or newsletters you will have seen advice on how to understand your ideal clients and how to express the value of what you do. Both of these will help to distinguish you from your competition as they probably won’t have the same ideal clients and it’s likely they will be using reasonably generic marketing that focuses more on features than benefits.
Personally I feel that focusing too much on your competition is quite a negative stance as it means you don’t feel you are as “good” as they are. This in turn will help to fuel the self-doubt in your head which certainly is not helpful! It is important though to understand how you are different from your competition especially if, from your ideal client’s viewpoint, there are numerous providers for what you offer in your area.
Let’s use me as an example…When I first started out I called myself a Business Advisor. Quite quickly I found this to be a very boring title that was far too broad and didn’t help me describe what value I could deliver to my ideal clients. I then moved to calling myself a Business Growth Specialist which was far more descriptive and pretty much always lead to more questions being asked of me. However it still didn’t differentiate me from all the other business development businesses that exist in my area. I made myself work on my definition of my ideal clients and polished up my products & services and From Employee to Business Owner was born. I haven’t yet met another business that focuses 100% on the same niche, let alone one that can talk about their own journey from employee to business owner (rather than using theoretical advice). By doing this I wiped out my competition.
Hopefully you can see how important understanding your ideal clients is to positioning yourself in the market place as it not only helps pull more of your ideal clients to you but is also helps you to remove your competition.
Having said that it is important to understand who you are up against when your potential client is making a buying decision. The best way to work that out is to Google the search term(s) you would expect your ideal clients to Google to find you. Make a list of:
- All the potential competitors you find,
- What they offer,
- How they are positioning themselves (basically what value are they saying they offer to their clients, what credibility are they giving themselves etc), and importantly any obvious things they aren’t saying they can do
- How are they marketing themselves (are they using social media, if so how often, what are they posting about etc, do they offer free resources, are they speaking at events etc etc)
- How they price their products and/or services
This level of understanding will help you see how to position yourself with your blend of ideal clients, products and services. By doing this effectively you will start to reap the benefits and to remove the concept of competition for your business.
Take some positive action today and check out what your competition is doing.