When you are starting a business, you need to analyze and assess the competition. Most of you if not all of you have competition. Competition is what makes us better business people. Your first step in reviewing the competition is Know Who the Competition is! I can’t tell you how many people go into business without knowing who their competitors are. I just spoke with a prospective new client on Friday and I asked them who the competitors are and the answer blew me off my chair. He said he didn’t really have any competitors and without going into what the product or service was just know, that it was not some new invention that was never created before. As the conversation continued I was able to point out who his competitors were. You are not learning who the competition is so you can worry and obsess about them. You are learning who the competition is so you can learn from them and about them and strategize against them. Zig when they Zag if you will.
Learning from competitors – One thing I always used to do is go to trade shows to seek out who my competitors are. Trade shows are a great way to stake out your competition. Get information from their booths and even speak to their representatives. Look at their advertisements; discover the different ways they market and communicate to the market place. See if you can figure out how their logistics work or if they use contract manufacturers. See if you can find out what their distribution strategy is. If you market regionally (like a brick and mortar retailer) you should develop relationships with businesses that do what you do who are not in your market. I cannot overemphasize the abundance of information and ideas you will get out of those relationships. I have had life long relationships with people who are in the same business as I was but were in different markets.
Strategizing against competitors – Take what you learned from the competition and put together a plan on what things you do or if you are just starting what things you will do the same and what things you will do differently. You need to figure out what separates your business from the competition. Two competitors may have the same product but they may be trying to solve different problems. See if you can solve a different problem than your competitor who may have the same product.
Another thing you need to do is find out what suppliers are giving your competition that they are not giving you. For example, is your competition getting co-op advertising or are they not paying re-stocking charges, or maybe the competitors are getting free freight or better terms. Sometimes competitors get these things because they ask for them. Certainly you should ask for these things but if you are refused, see if anyone is getting them. It takes some work, but if you are persistent you will find out and then you can go back to your suppliers and ask why your competitor is getting something and you are not.
Take a good look at competitors’ websites. Do they have blogs? Do they have forums where they impart information? Do they have videos? Do they do an internet radio show? Do they have a list of products and do they present them in a different way. I used to call up competitors to see what prices they were selling similar products. Did the competitor come up with a new pricing package or program? Plug yourself into this information.
In order to have a successful business you need to have a solution to a problem that exists in the market place. If you know what your competitor is doing maybe you can come up with a different solution than they have or at least a different way to go about it. The more you can separate yourself from the competition the more of a marketing success you will be. This is why it is so important to know thy competition.
