Competition is that driving force that will force your business to sharpen its spear and rethink its strategies. But rest assured, business doesn’t need to become a battlefield. With the right tools and strategies, you can make short order of your business rivals while Beating your competition.
Rethink Your Rivalries
First things first, lets take a deep breath and realize that a bit of competition is a good thing. If you’re on the forefront of a new industry or your business is spearheading an evolution in your market, competition reassures you that your business is really onto something. But if your industry is SO saturated with competition that your business is drowning, you should consider re-positioning your product or service.
Develop a deeper niche. Look for a pocket in your market that you can conquer.
An entertaining example of this is a company that dove right into a crowded market that wasn’t paying attention to their customers: Dollar Shave Club.
Over the past decade, the disposable razor industry went mad with razor ‘technology’. From Mach 3 glide technology to ‘fusion power’, or whatever that means. For decades, men have shaved their faces successfully without needing these useless ‘advancements’. Dollar shave club realized this perfect niche. Men who just want a no hassle, cheap solution for their shaving needs.
Dollar Shave Club’s clever video and no BS stance went viral and is providing the company a stage to compete with the big corporations that rule the market. Read more about the viral video here.
As a result of their creative thinking, they’ve opened a whole to segment to their industry: The Razor subscription payment model.
Keep Tabs on Your Rivals
The internet has changed the game in many ways. With how information travels, and how easy it is to find out everything about someone or something, why not use it to your advantage?
Check out your competition. Keep tabs on who’s your biggest rival or who’s ‘rising in the ranks’. Utilize the internet and all the tools it provides to find out how your competition is marketing itself or sets itself apart and do it better!
Read your competitions good AND bad reviews. Find out what their doing right and what their doing wrong. Learn from both their mistakes and their successes and start beating your business competitors.
Utilize all of the online tools that’ll help you gather this information and more. Sign-up to our newsletter below and receive our guide full of the tools that we use to stay ahead of our competition.
Subscribe below to receive our Free Guide Showcasing the Very Best Tools to Find Your Competitive Advantage.
Once subscribed, you’ll be sent our Ultimate Guide to Business: Business Tools for your Competitive Advantage right to your inbox!
Think Strategically
Once you get a handle of your competition’s condition, use your competition’s problems to your benefit.
A great example of this was a Disney scandal that was strategically exploited by their competition, Hanna-Barbera.
When Disney discovered that three Hallandale, Florida, day care centers had 5-foot-high likenesses of trademarked Disney characters painted on their walls, they threatened to sue the day care centers for unauthorized use of their characters. Hearing this, Universal Studios and Hanna-Barbera volunteered and gave them the right to use Universal characters as decorations.
This was a perfect opportunity for Universal to paint Disney as an evil corporation going after daycare centers. Where, in reality, it’s about mis-representation and protecting the consumer.
5 foot high displays might give the impression that the Florida area schools are somehow affiliated or sponsored by Disney, which they are not. Keep in mind that these are for profit schools, not public schools, and certainly not charity case schools. They did it for profit. They did it to entice parents to send their children there under false pretense.
Hanna-Barbera was exploiting a situation to give themselves a spotlight in what would otherwise be a pretty mundane event.
Following the activities and events in which your main competition is involved may open your business up to opportunities like this that can be seized.
Competition is a natural part of business. And the easiest way to find competitive success is to be on your toes, stay vigilant, and use all the tools that are availed to you.