Treat your competitors as friends and pip them to the post. Sara Ruber, director of Become, explains the business benefits of keeping the competition close.
Your competitors are the enemy, right? Incompetent, unprofessional, constantly screwing up and so forth. It's natural to have a healthy sense of rivalry. After all, your competitors would happily trample over you to get to the top, wouldn't they?
But tip the scales too far and rivalry can soon turn to ignorance. When you become blind to the strengths of your competitors or dismiss them with put-downs, you stand to lose more than your pride, you put your business on the line. Not only that, you miss out on the business benefits of treating competitors more like friends.
If they don't, how can you use that knowledge to your advantage through your own branding and marketing? Well, business is business after all. Nobody said new best friends were supposed to be forever!
Your competitors are the enemy, right? Incompetent, unprofessional, constantly screwing up and so forth. It's natural to have a healthy sense of rivalry. After all, your competitors would happily trample over you to get to the top, wouldn't they?
But tip the scales too far and rivalry can soon turn to ignorance. When you become blind to the strengths of your competitors or dismiss them with put-downs, you stand to lose more than your pride, you put your business on the line. Not only that, you miss out on the business benefits of treating competitors more like friends.
Differentiation
Your competitors help you find your place in the market and differentiate your offering. Without understanding their businesses and the services they offer, how can you identify niche market opportunities which could be game-changing for you? If you're too busy snarling at the competition to take a healthy, objective interest in them, how will you spot the early signs that they're moving into different territories or developing new products, for example?Comparison
Your customers need to compare you to other potential suppliers in order to make sense of what you offer. It's a normal part of the buying process to consider all options before making a choice. Your competitors are a good sign that you're part of a thriving marketplace. In other words, your very existence depends on them.Collaboration
We've all done it, we've made assumptions that a business is all about this or that. But what if some of those businesses you assume are your competition actually operate in different ways or service different markets than you thought, opening up opportunities for collaboration? You'll never find out if you keep seeing them as your enemies.Ways to find out who your new friends are
Getting to know your competition isn't a one-off fact finding mission. You need to be constantly on the look out for new competitors in the market, even when your business is fully established, so you can keep on top of market trends and respond to them. Places to look include:- Advertising and press releases
- Local online and offline business directories
- Local Chamber of Commerce
- Internet searches for similar products and services
- Information provided by customers
- Existing patented products that are similar to yours
- What sorts of things to find out about them
- The products/services they provide
- How they market them and to whom
- How much they charge
- How they distribute and deliver
- Who their customers are and how happy they are with different aspects of their products/services
- What their brands stands for and what brand promises they make
- How innovative they are with their services and use of IT
- Their sizes, structures and reputations
- What events they participate in or trade shows they exhibit in
- Where to find the information
- Internet searches on business names
- Marketing literature
- Company websites and associated sites
- Articles, adverts and reviews
- Entries in phone books and directories
- Get pally on social media
If they don't, how can you use that knowledge to your advantage through your own branding and marketing? Well, business is business after all. Nobody said new best friends were supposed to be forever!
