By Bizna Brand Analyst
Competition with a rival company can push you to improve your business and service or product to better appeal to your target demographic. By identifying, analyzing and strategizing against your competition, you can improve your business model to appeal to more clients and customers.
Identifying your competition
An important part of dealing with any rival businesses is to know who the competition is. Your market could be an age or consumer demographic or it could be the area where your main office resides. Regardless of what your specific market is, your competition will be another company that has created a product or service that directly impacts your sales. While it may not be the exact product or service you provide, it can be something that affects your market share by creating an alternative to what you offer. To compete, you need to better your own product to keep your share of the market.
Analyzing your competition
Take a look at how your competition is eating into your market share. Your competitor could be using different marketing methods, providing customers with a new spin on your product, offering a lower price or providing better customer service. s. By analyzing these methods, you can figure out how to improve your overall business strategy.
Knowing your clients
Take a look at how your competitors got where they are. The information they used to cut into your market share is valuable to your business. By polling or talking to your current customers and asking other people in your target demographic about what they expect from a business, you may be able to change your model to appease these individuals and directly challenge your competitor.
Strategizing against the competition
Once you have the necessary information, start taking back that market share. Decide what kind of marketing you need. If you’re looking at a younger demographic, think about how you can reach this group through the Internet and social networking. Older individuals may respond more to advertising through the newspaper, radio or television. Ultimately, you want a marketing campaign that tells about your new business model, while keeping true to your company’s mission statement.
Adjusting Your Business
Whether it’s a new focus on customer service or a lower price model, if you’re losing valuable market share to a competitor, it’s crucial to change your current business model. By competing directly with your competitor’s price plan, you can begin to win back some of the customers you lost and win some new ones. Additional customer service can make your customers feel special and wanted, bringing about repeat business and creating a positive word of mouth. Find those weak spots in your business model and replace them with efficient plans that address those deficiencies. Adapting to new adversaries and challenges in the dynamic business world can keep you at the forefront of your market.
Accept imitation as a form of flattery
Let’s say a competitor starts following your every move. You put an advertisement on the newspaper, they put an advertisement on the newspaper. You hire more employees, and they do the same. Rather than getting frustrated, realize that they’re only copying you because you’re winning at what you’re doing. It’s not your fault that other company can’t come up with their own ideas.
Just don’t rest on your laurels, or they might surpass you. Keep on innovating so that you’re the model everyone wants to be.
Realize that competitors aren’t always competitors
This can be a valuable and humbling lesson. If you always treat others in your industry as competition, you can miss out on great partnership opportunities. Think of a writer like me who feels like she’s battling against another writer in his space. Once he changes her thought patterns, he finds that the other writer is willing to hire him to help with overflow work he doesn’t have time to take on.
By looking at others in your industry as potential partners, you open yourself up to even more business.
In business, you have to be authentically fierce and bold. Pay attention to what others are doing, and find your own path. And if they mimic you, take it as a compliment and keep moving forward.
