Competitors In Business

Have you ever thought that marketing your small business would be easier without competitors?

Most of us have at time to time.

Whilst you shouldn’t be fixated on your competitors, you can’t afford to ignore them.

Having competitors is healthy

Remember the competition you face in your market may be direct or indirect.

Here are another 11 reasons why it is good for your business:

·         Helps grow your business and market

·         Reminds you to focus on keeping your key customers

·         Provides opportunities for creative thinking

·         Stops complacency

·         Allows for working together on common industry or market issues

·         Can motivate you to a higher standard of customer service or innovation

·         Provides ideas you can adapt for your products or services

·         Helps identify potential threats to your business

·         Helps your strengths and weaknesses

·         Provides an alternative for customers who are not a good fit for your business

·         Helps you work smarter

It’s time for businesses, especially small businesses, to take advantage of competition and develop true transparency for growth and development.

Talking to small businesses and entrepreneurs writing business plans, I find that business owners often wish that they had no competition. Businesses usually are thinking that with no competition, the entire market for their product or service will be theirs. I don’t think that is the case – especially for newstartups that have truly innovative products and services. Here’s why: 

·         Competition validates your idea

You know you have a good idea when other people are coming up with similar products or services. Competition validates the market and the fact that there are most likely customers for your new product. This also means that the costs of marketing and educating your market goes down (see my next point).

·         Competition helps educate your target market
Being first-to-market can be a huge advantage, but that also means that you will have to spend way more than the 2nd-to-market player to educate the market about your new widget, your new solution to a problem, your new approach to services. This is especially true for businesses that are extremely innovative. These first-to-market businesses will be facing customers that didn’t know that there was a solution to the their problem. These potential customers might not even know that they have a problem that can be solved in a better way. These first-to-market companies will have an uphill battle to educate consumers – an often expensive and time consuming process. The 2nd-to-market will enjoy all the benefits of an educated marketplace without the large marketing expense.

·         Competition pushes you
Businesses that have little or no competition become stagnant. Customers have few alternatives to choose from, so there is no incentive to innovate. Constant competition ensures that your marketplace continues to evolve and that your product offering continues to evolve with it.

·         Competition forces focus & differentiation
Without competition, it’s easy to lose focus on your core business and your core customers and start expanding into areas that don’t serve your best customers. Competition forces you and your business to figure out how to be different than your competition, how you can focus on your customers. In the long-term, competition will help you build a better business.

Focusing too much on your competition, however, is a bad thing.

·         It stifles creativity
If all you do is track your competition and do endless competitive analysis, you won’t be able to come up with original ideas. You will end up looking and acting just like your competition. Instead, make a habit of NOT visiting your competition’s website, NOT going into their store, NOT calling their sales office. Focus instead on how you can provide the best service possible and spend your time talking to your customers and not your competition.

·         It keeps you from focusing on your customers

Following your competition means that you aren’t focusing on your customers and what they want – you’re focusing on how your competition serves its customers. Instead of spending time figuring out how you can better serve the next person that walks in the door so that they become a lifetime customer, a reference, a referral source, you are becoming a copycat. When that happens, it won’t matter to a customer if they walk into your store or your competition’s because you will both be the same.

Every business has competition, even if it is not direct competition. There is always an alternative method to solve the problem you are solving, even if your idea and solution is revolutionary. For example, initial competition to the car was the horse and buggy (or plain old walking). Competition for the Mac’s initial foray into desktop publishing was not other computing systems, but manual cut & paste layout systems. It’s OK to have competition and in fact it is a good thing.

As you grow your business, it’s critical to understand how your customers currently solve the problem you are addressing. This will help you focus your marketing and really address your customers’ true needs.