Who will win? You or your competition?
Competition Research
Business Start Up
If you looking to start a business I would suggest you include some Competition Research first because you will need to know what kind of spending is required to make your business a success. Thousands of businesses fail every year because they fail to set aside the budget needed to market their business properly. A similar number fail due to spending their marketing budgets in areas that have no return on their investments.
Current Business
It has always surprised me how few businesses research their competition for advice. Yes you can get advice from your competitors. If you watch what your successful competitors are doing and what those that are failing are doing you can gain some insight into what works and what does not work. This process can save you the cost of marketing your business in the wrong way.
Question: Are there times when something is working for a company but cannot work for another? Perhaps. What I mean to say is that sometimes the timing of starting up a marketing campaign may have been just right and that company may have been able to dominate that marketing segment. It is also possible that a company may have made an investment over years to build up that marketing segment making it more difficult for new comers to succeed in the same marketing segment. All companies that work hard to get the most benefit out of a digital marketing segment will be more difficult to overcome or to compete with than one that is lazy with their marketing efforts.
So look ahead at the competitors you want to compete with for their business, and look behind you to see if there are competitors coming up from behind you trying to take your business. Your efforts need to propel you better than the competitions efforts. If you are a leader in your industry and you own a marketing segment, then you are a target. In this position you may need to become more proactive in looking for a better way to market your business because those smaller businesses are looking for a way around the marketing plan you have developed or they are chiseling their way up to meet you, taking revenue as they go.
If you spend more on the investigation of your competitors you will be rewarded in the end with greater profits and lower marketing costs.