Unless you live in a vacuum, your business will have competitors. There may be only a few, there may be many, but most likely you want to beat them. It’s a dog eat dog world out there and you have to fight hard to survive, stay ahead of the game, keep your nose in front and every other business related cliché you can think of. In short, bouncing the competition off the walls is part of the DNA of your business.
The equation is simple: Beat the competition = Get more customers = Achieve more success.
The problem is that, particularly in the business world, nothing is that simple.
Competition actually encourages you to take your eyes off the ball and spending too much time outwitting your opponents can simply be a waste of valuable time. Acme Solutions across town might be stealing customers with a product similar to yours, but that’s not the problem. It’s not even the problem.
The problem is that you forgot to ask what your market really wants.
What is competition?
Who competes for your customers? If you own a restaurant, then you might think it’s the Chinese restaurant down the street or the McDonald’s at the local mall. Yes, they are in the same business as you, they are providing cooked food and the promise of a good time in the same way as your humble little restaurant.
But they are not the only competition. There are threats to your business everywhere.
There’s the bar next door and the grocery store next door to name just two.
Expect? A grocery store? Blue Apron Gourmet meals are direct competition for your restaurant. Your customer, who was previously going to visit your restaurant, sees a good recipe in the store and decides to stay for lunch. That, my friend, is competition. That pre-cooked and wrapped gourmet food is competing for a share of your market.
Other competition may include supermarkets and corner stores. You can even include the local movie theater: hey honey, do you want to eat or go see that movie tonight? Anything that diverts customers from your restaurant is a competitor. Hell, even a sick kid when your client is about to go out for a date is a competitor.
Competition is pervasive and often dire. It’s not always what you think it is. For your market it is any product or service that solves the same problem, even if it is a completely different type of solution.
competition is good
Yes. In general, the competition is good. It creates options, helps you improve your particular piece of the pie, and drives innovation. Without competitors, you would have to find your own solutions instead of stealing theirs. These illusory people and corporations actually justify your existence: you are not the only person in the world who thinks this product is useful. Competition is good. Competition is GREAT!
Your competition can give you a proven roadmap to success. How?
Examine your top five successful competitors. Do a Google search for each of their names and check out the links to all the sales and channel visibility partners they’ve leveraged over the years to build awareness and drive revenue. Many of these same channels are also likely to be good opportunities for your business. Examine how and where they are marketed.
For example, it is one thing to know that you are reaching your market through social networks like Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook and Instagram. Another is to study what, specifically, they are doing on those platforms to successfully engage with their audience. If your competitors have a newsletter, sign up and watch how they communicate with their customers. Study how email marketing deepens your relationship and credibility within the target market.
Staying ahead by a nose is not enough
Many companies fall into the trap of trying to stay ahead of the competition. The store across the street is offering a three for two deal, so you better go ahead and start offering a buy one get one free deal. They provide a complimentary cup with your ground coffee, you decide you have to give a free coffee maker with each package. The law firm next door decides to provide free consultations, you think it’s an appropriate time to start performing legal surgery in your local park.
You spend so much time keeping up with the competition that you stop thinking about what your customer really wants. You lose focus. And that is bad.
Forget adhesive plaster solutions
Let’s make this clear right away: your competition is irrelevant.
If you spend a lot of your time trying to keep small increments ahead of your nearest rival, then a) you’re going to be fighting for your trading life every minute of every day, b) you’re not going to be successful, and c) you’re probably going to be to end up in an early grave.
Your market is important. Your market is the only thing that matters and you need to get away from this misconception that beating the competition makes you stronger. It doesn’t. Beating the competition is like putting a Band-Aid on an ax wound.
Delving into the complete solution
Your product or service will sell if you provide what your market wants. You provide a solution to their problem. That’s why people buy things. That’s why they want your product. Is it good enough? It could be better? The answer to that lies in finding out the cost of the problem, be it financial, emotional, or even physical, and then discovering the solution. To do this, you need to dig deeper into what your potential customers are thinking. It needs to go beyond the bland surveys that many market research organizations unthinkingly opt for.
Let’s say your competitors have an adhesive plaster solution to a recurring problem your market has had to deal with for the last few years. How do you think your market would like a more sustainable solution, one that actually works? What difference do you think it would make to your business?
Eliminating the competition and digging deeper into the market problem takes time and effort. That’s why a lot of companies just stick to the traditional process of beating Geoff or Mabel in the future. It is easier. That is all. It may not lead to success, but at least everyone is fighting with the same weapons. Literally no one brings a gun to the local knife fight.
This is what separates true entrepreneurs from aspiring business leaders. They work hard to peel back the layers of a particular problem, constantly asking that childish WHY, and keep going until the viable solution is within reach. Your market represents the out-of-the-box expert who knows all about the problem, they know how it affects them, and they know what a solution should look like, even if they don’t have a solid product yet.
Your job as an entrepreneur is to forensically dismantle it and come up with the innovative solution that literally blows the competition out of the water. Let’s face it, if you’ve found the perfect solution to your market problem, who should be putting in the effort to stay ahead of the competition? You will have what your market wants and needs.