It’s a rare business that has no competition. Even if you are in a VERY niche market, there are almost always others vying for your prospects money or business.
It isn’t just the obvious competitors either. If you get most of your new business from online searches, even a small business you’ve never heard of can suddenly show up beating you in search rankings or spending a lot of money on Google Ads.
Or maybe you’re losing business to competitors going to trade shows, or running bus stop ads or placing ads on restaurant place mats.
Competition represents CHALLENGES and OPPORTUNITIES.
The challenges are usually pretty obvious. But if you have no competitors maybe there’s no profitable market for what you are selling. Of course that never stopped Steve Jobs. There was no market for smart phones until he invented them.
But let’s talk about the opportunities your competitors may present. You don’t usually think of them that way.
If there is one Big Dog in your line of work, you may be able to feed off their brand. You can run Google Ads that say “Why pay Whizomatic prices? Our can openers are as good at 40% less.” Their Trademark doesn’t protect them against that kind of advertising (Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer). Have a page on your website comparing your product to Whizomatic’s. Do a good enough job and your website may show up in a search for their product.
If a competitor is doing better in search than you are, analyze their website and see what they are doing right and you do that too. You may only end up ranking 2nd – but better than the other 999 competitors.
You can also look at calls to action and other marketing points of a more successful competitor, and imitate what they are doing.
There are only two potential liabilities in imitating a competitor. One, if it is too much a straight imitation people can be confused and not even realize you are marketing a different company. In that case your work can actually benefit the competitor more than you.
The other point is to make sure you are imitating something that is working. Sometimes you see fads where everyone in an industry imitates each other – not because it is actually good or effective, but “everyone is doing it so it must be right.” The whole legal industry imitated the websites of the most successful company in the space. It wasn’t good work. Pretty soon you couldn’t tell one attorney from another. And left room for individual efforts to do quality work that did stand out.
Oops.
