Photo Courtesy of Exfordy
Have you read Chris Brogan’s “You’re Racing – I’m Improving” blog post yet? He admits that he keeps score against a few other blogs, but he emphasizes that his main goal is to improve himself and his business. Unfortunately, if you’re not keeping score, you will miss crucial growth opportunities.
However, you can’t obsess over your competition and their success. You need to keep score for a reason. You need to find out why your competition is becoming successful and look for ways to duplicate that success in your business.
For example, while I absolutely hate the AWEBER pop-up subscription boxes, many people helped their bottom line substantially with this tactic. If they weren’t keeping score, they would have missed this chance.
Additionally, the now deceased billionaire Sam Walton visited variety stores competing with Wal-Mart regularly. He would walk around his competition and find best-practices that he could immediately implement to help his bottom line and I’m sure you know how successful he turned out.
But how can you use the competition to improve your business?
1. Look for Explanations
Did you stumble across one of your competitors that experienced a surge in growth, whereas you didn’t? Well, the absolute worst thing you can become is envious. Instead, you need to learn from their success. You need to find out what caused their growth and try to implement that best-practice in your business.
Oh, and guess what, if you’re a blogger and your competition is a blogger, you don’t need to look for an explanation. You could probably ask and they would tell you.
2. Ride Their Wave
One of the best things about a competitor who experiences a surge in growth is that you can use it to your advantage. You can actually take out your surfboard and ride their wave to the top.
I remember when some major news broke and a blogger I knew ranked #1 in Google for it. They were receiving around 3,000,000 hits per day for a week. Do you know what the best part was? They were still selling Blogads for $45 dollars a week. So, I bought a few and received millions of impressions for practically nothing.
3. Be The Antagonist
Did one of your competitors see a surge in growth because they nailed their colors to the flag pole? Well, you should nail a different color to the flagpole and claim yours is better. Even if you don’t build a huge following, you will find some supporters to support you simply because you’re the antagonist.
4. Build Off Their Success
If one of your competitors launched a successful new product, you should launch a peripheral product that builds off their success. While your sales may be limited to their niche, it is a great way to get exposure
Want a perfect example of this? Think about iPhone peripherals. There are tons of people making a ton of money off of iPhone apps, iPhone cases, iPhone headphones, and the like. These companies use a successful product to launch their products and it works.
The Bottom Line
Time spent in admiration is time wasted. So, if you’re going to look at your competitors success, make sure you’re doing it for a specific reason that will help your business. Make sure you’re looking for specific action plans that you can immediately implement today so you don’t miss any opportunities.
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Wow, awesome post Derek.
I do 1 before I read this post =) Go me? Haha,
I would love to do 3, I don’t think I can do 4 and 2 is just plain difficult. Although if you get lucky, bam, you’ll get some nice success!
Great points! I’ve been used this tactic to set prices for my new computer consulting business. I called up every single computer consultant in my local phone book and asked them questions about their services and pricing, as if I were a customer. I got some great informaton, some new ideas, and most importantly, I found some holes in there services that I can fill with mine.
@ Trevor It’s not as hard as you think. Sometimes it just takes a little finesse.
@Your Friendly Neighborhood Computer Guy – That’s great market research. That’s how the big corporations do it so you might as well do it too. Nice job.
Excellent post. Instead of stewing over a competitors success – build on their success. Sometimes it hard for some to take the emotions out of business.
@Derek,
Little finesse? What do you mean?
I love to use the surfboard and ride somebody’s wave as you put it… my question is just if the additional traffic helped your bottom line. It probably did
Nevertheless, because of this I developed a tool (in alpha) that makes it easier to keep score against a few other bloggers and their social media efforts compared to yours. Signup, enter your URL then their URLs and start benchmarking – watch the trends.
I hope you all check it out
@ Trevor Doing number 4 or number 2 is not as difficult as you think. For example, if you go to google trends and you see a new hot search term. Just take a look at the companies who rank for it in Google and see how you can get your name on their website. You can leave a comment, buy an advertisement, or whatever you want. Just make sure its a value buy.
@Derek
Wow. Taught me something new =)
Thanks.
your welcome.
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