business trends

Competitors are one of your largest business threats. You have to know who your competitors are and how they operate. You will use this information to decide how to position yourself, where you price yourself, and how you’re perceived by your marketplace.

Competitor Analysis

When you research your competitors you should list what kinds of companies are your biggest competition. Possible competitor types you should consider are:

Big PC manufacturers

Computer consulting moonlighters

Established computer consulting businesses

Software producers and distributors

Once you decide which types of competitors pose the most threat, go through the list and identify specific companies in each category that you consider to be significant competitors.

When you have a good idea who exactly your largest competitors are, then you need to find out how they operate. You need to uncover their biggest strengths and biggest weaknesses. You want to be able to exploit their weaknesses. In fact a lot of your business value will come from exploiting your competitors’ weaknesses.

Listen to what people are saying in the large electronics stores and warehouses. Talk to your friends, family, coworkers, and acquaintances.

What are they saying about computer support?

What are they complaining about?

What causes them frustration?

Use this information to be better than your competitors. You need to understand how you can be better than your competitors and then use that information to fit yourself into the market.

The Bottom Line on Competitors

Competitors will always be around. Your job as a new business owner is to understand how you fit into the market. Figure out where your competitors are strong and where they are weak. Then exploit your competitors’ weakness by positioning yourself as the obvious, better alternative.

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When developing the competition section of your business plan, companies must define competition correctly, select the appropriate competitors to analyze, and explain its competitive advantages.

To start, companies must align their definition of competition with investors. Investors define competition as any service or product that a customer can use to fulfill the same need(s) as the company fulfills. This includes firms that offer similar products, substitute products and other customer options (such as performing the service or building the product themselves). Under this broad definition, any business plan that claims there are no competitors greatly undermines the credibility of the management team.

In identifying competitors, companies often find themselves in a difficult position. On one hand, they want to show that they are unique (even under the investors’ broad definition) and list no or few competitors. However, this has a negative connotation. If no or few companies are in a market space, it implies that there may not be a large enough customer need to support the company’s products and/or services.

Business plans must detail direct and, when applicable, indirect competitors. Direct competitors are those that serve the same target market with similar products and services. Indirect competitors are those that serve the same target market with different products and services, or a different target market with similar products and services.

After identifying competitors, the business plan must describe them. In doing so, the plan must also objectively analyze each competitor’s strengths and weaknesses and the key drivers of competitive differentiation in the marketplace.

Perhaps most importantly, the competition section must describe the company’s competitive advantages over the other firms, and ideally how the company’s business model creates barriers to entry. “Barriers to entry” are reasons why customers will not leave once acquired.

In summary, too many business plans want to show how unique their venture is and, as such, list no or few competitors. However, this often has a negative connotation. If no or few companies are in a market space, it implies that there may not be a large enough customer need to support the venture’s products and/or services. In fact, when positioned properly, including successful and/or public companies in a competitive space can be a positive sign since it implies that the market size is big. It also gives investors the assurance that if management executes well, the venture has substantial profit and liquidity potential.

Positioning or differentiating your business is paramount in today’s crowded competitive environment.

A friend of mine who has a recruitment business had 400 competitors in their city in 1995, today there are over 1200.

So why will people choose you over the myriad of companies in your market? You need to do something different. Everyone will say they do a better job, they have the best people or the best product….who cares…..I want to buy from the company that will give ME what I want. That could be faster delivery times, better range, better quality, better pricing or even just plain friendlier service.

Whatever it is, you need to be able to identify what your market wants and address that need…and if everyone’s competing on price, take a different tack…become the PREMIUM product or “the expert” or the easiest to do business with…but BE DIFFERENT.

To establish your credentials you can write “white papers” or articles about important market trends or product reviews and have them posted on your website and article sites like ezine.

Make yourself available to give talks on your field of expertise. To get yourself started, Rotary, Probus and other service clubs are always interested in having a speaker, you get FREE publicity and if you’re scared of public speaking, remember you’ll be talking about a topic you love and know lots about…YOUR BUSINESS!

Try a different method of marketing, just because it’s always been done one way, doesn’t mean it’s still the best way. If you can’t come up with any ideas, talk to people. Your friends will want to offer suggestions and if that’s not working, look to professional consultants, they’re not all expensive and if they can help you identify your return on investment (how you’ll recover their costs), you know they’re serious to help you succeed.

Times like these present the perfect opportunity for you to establish your position against your larger competitors. People are looking for better value and easier ways of doing business. If you’re agile and have great people working with you, you can position yourself to deliver value far more quickly than the big companies.

Do you have your own business? Are a web businessman? It does not really matter whether you are a beginner in business or an advanced entrepreneur, as from the very start anyone dealing with any kind of business must understand fully that competition is the engine that drives commerce forward. OK, but what means do we need in order to achieve such a high competition profile and thus brilliant sales results? Well a professional approach with modern marketing knowledge is paramount along with a competitive spirit and a strong will to win. If you want top poll position and need it bad enough you will know only too well it is in your hands to prove that you can achieve it. You may well think this is all talk and theory. Yes, you are right it is, but it is born out of experience and the practices of many others who have gone before you.

An internet web presence of your business on the internet is now not only a good thing to have but is part and parcel necessity of everyday commerce and a powerful weapon in your sales armory to have at your disposal. It is an ideal advantage to have a qualitative website with presence and panache. Let us now look and discuss some of the key factors that should make up your online business presentation. Foremost for any site is the primary aim to attract visitors and clients and thus raise turnover and profit. In order to stand out from the crowd your site must have a brand image and appearance that makes it unique and memorable. Your website is the virtual face of your business. The whole look and feel should be impressive and easily navigated, as it is a must for the design and creation to be done in such a way that visitors recognize your site and come back to you again and again.

Another important professional feature which is often overlooked is the dissemination of clear concise information. Information captures clients and provides you with good daily traffic that assists your marketing online presence in the search engines. Thus you need to make this information interesting, appealing useful and digestible. Try to make the navigation through and around the site as easy and convenient for user as possible, again a good design team will be taking this into account from the outset. To increase throughput you can raise the sites profile by using mailing lists and reports to your regular visitors with the updated information, sales actions, discounts, promotions etc. But, try not to overdo with message sending. If it gets too regular it can have the opposite affect whereby users or clients may well place your mail into junk automatically. Remember, users do not like it overkill. You may also wish to use more expensive methods for audience seizure. For example, using standard media advertising packages such as newspapers, radio or TV can boast the throughput. However, these tools are more efficient for large volume profile rising, and in turn they also come with quite a heavy price.

Do these only when you are ready and feel that the marketing initiative suits the need. You will also need a very good SEO campaign, which will hopefully leave your competitors well behind in the race to dominate the first page ranking positions of Google or Yahoo. If you wish your site to be successful, it must be well optimized. This is again is a key prerequisite to a successful online business. Good high ranking is the result of professional SEO marketing company.

You know what you want to do and you are sure you are going to find plenty of customers and make plenty of money. Your idea is inherently better than what you have seen out there, so why bother looking into the competition? This is a common, and dangerous, attitude for many first-time entrepreneurs. The reality is that failing to scope out the competition is a mistake that is difficult to recover from, and one that can easily be remedied with a little time, a little effort, and a decent internet connection.

Direct and Indirect Competition

Competition in business comes in two broad categories — direct competitors who do exactly what you do and indirect competitors who fill the same need for consumers but in a different way. Gathering as much information about both types of competitors as possible is critical in developing the most likely road map to a successful venture. Learning all about direct competitors provides a benchmark for comparing your business idea to what is already available and finding opportunities to set your company apart from everyone else.

Shorten Your Learning Curve

Knowledge of competitors’ operations and marketing can dramatically reduce the learning curve for your venture, especially if the competitor has enjoyed relative success over time. Much can be learned from spending time in a competitor’s brick-and-mortar store, from expected traffic patterns to product placement. Well-developed business websites provide significant insight as well, such as the features that the competitor estimates are most important to their customer base. You may even be able to discuss your idea with a competitor that serves a different geographical market…people love to tell others what they know.

Unique Selling Proposition

An important step in developing a comprehensive marketing plan is identifying your product’s USP — unique selling proposition. This is the cut-and-dried reason that consumers will select your product. The only way to create a legitimate USP is to know the primary and secondary competition inside and out. Launching a new product in a crowded market means there must be a good reason to switch or to choose yours over the others. If you don’t know what’s out there, you won’t be able to establish your product as better, faster, or stronger than the other options.

If you are introducing a new or innovative product, knowledge of the indirect competition is essential. Whatever need or want your product is designed to fill, it is critical to know how consumers are filling it now. Indirect competitors offer products that meet the same or similar needs as yours. For example, if your product is an innovative smart phone application for managing time, your indirect competitors would be hard copy planners, standard time-management software, and even time-management consultants. Investigating these competitors will tell you why people choose these other options and what features help them sell.

Be Sure Your Research is Thorough

If you are unable to find any direct or indirect competitors, either your research is incomplete or your product has no market. The old adage “there is nothing new under the sun” is true…somebody is offering something that competes with your business idea. It is essential to find and acknowledge those competitors before you enter the market and to keep tabs on them once the business is up, running, and making money. Business is all about competition, and the more you know, the better your chances of success.

Researching the competition is not just a startup responsibility. Don’t just do it to fill in that section of the business plan. Rather, the more you know about the competition, the more you know about what works and what doesn’t, where they think the market is headed, how they respond to changes. Always stay on top of your competition and at least one step ahead. No need to be secretive about what you do, just be sure you do it right and better and at the right time. If your competitors will share with you, take it all in.