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This is Part 2 in this a series by this month’s Special Guest Blogger – Meagan Visser. You can read Part 1 here.
Do you want to learn how to differentiate your business from your competition, but don’t know which competitors are worth learning from?
Will Competitor A benefit you? Competitor B is also similar to your business, but do they have anything of value to offer you when it comes to studying their business?
If these are questions you’ve asked yourself before, then keep reading because today I’m going to tell you which competitors you need to pay attention to & how they can help you grow.
Shoot For The Stars
When you’re looking to your competition, there’s no use looking to businesses that are in the same position as you. If they’ve been in business for the same amount of time as you or they’re experiencing the same amount of success as you are at the moment, then most likely you won’t find much to learn from them.
It’s best to look at those who are more successful than you are. They’ve been where you are now & they’ve grown past that point & onto bigger & better things. You too want to grow, so why not study businesses that are where you want to be.
Take some time to think of 3 businesses that are similar to you, but are where you’d like to see yourself in 2-3 years. This is the competition you’re going to want to study & learn from.
How To Study Your Competitor
Once you’ve made a list of your competitors, you need to choose one to start studying. You’ll follow the same process with each competitor you have on your list.
There are two things you’re going to look for when it comes to your business & your competitor’s business.
- Similarities
- Differences
Recognizing your similarities & your differences is going help you in a couple different ways.
First off it’s going to help you to evaluate the position of your business & secondly it will help you to see what you can focus on to help make your business a bit different from theirs.
Learning From Your Competitor
Once you’ve discovered how your businesses are similar & different, it’s time to learn from your findings & apply it to your business.
Take your similarities for instance.
If you both have email newsletters that offer the same thing, ask yourself how you can make yours different or how you can make it more appealing to potential customers? Maybe you can offer something to them when they sign up, or maybe you can have exclusive content. If their newsletter opt-in box only contains boxes to enter an email address & name, consider a graphic or using your photo in your opt-in area.
When looking at your differences, you should see things that you can use to market your business in a way that your competition can’t.
Let’s say you make custom clothing for ladies & so does your competitor. They have a page on their website that shows a sample of all of the different fabrics customers can choose to have their clothing made from & you don’t. Of course you realize this is something that’s keeping you from making sales & so you need to do this for your business, but how can you take this difference & make it work for your business in a way that is different from your competition.
You could create a slideshow that rotates through your fabric choices. You could offer to send a set number of fabric swatches to customers for free or at a low cost. You could link to your preferred online fabric supplier & have customers choose their own fabric there. All of these would be different from what your competitor is doing & would set you apart even further.
In A Nutshell
It pays to check out your competition off & on. You don’t want to compete with similar businesses based on price. You want to stand out & give customers a reason to choose you. Knowing where you stand among your “role model†competitors will give you inspiration, ideas, & motivation that can really give your business a boost in the right direction!
The key is to always do things differently even if it goes against the grain or against what everyone else in the business is doing.
Remember, if you don’t work to make your business stand out, it will drown in the sea of sameness.
What’s one thing you’ve learned from your competitors that’s helped you in your business?
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