How Your Competitors Get Ahead of You…

You’re a smart person.

You have a business.  You have a successful business.  You have overcome challenges and learned what works and what does not.

Now is not the time to stop. Now is not the time to get comfortable.

Every day your competitors are advancing and if you do nothing, your business will left behind.

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1. Constant, strategic change.

It is not the greatest, the smartest, the biggest company that is the most successful.  It is the fastest to implement. Money loves speed.  There are a million great ideas out there.  What matters is who is the fastest to market.

2. Consistent, strategic presence.

According to Business Daily News the average American spends 8 hours per week checking their email, 7 hours a week on Facebook, and 5 hours a week on Youtube.  This does not include searching for things on Google, reading the news, or any of the other myriad of activities done online.  When your prospects are online, whose ads do they see? Whose videos do they watch? Whose press releases do they read? Whose emails are they getting in their inbox each week? Your competitors are everywhere online.  Are you?

3. Compelling, strategic plan.

Your competitors have a plan.  They have a specific strategy on how to grow their business each year.  They have laid out what it takes to increase their market share each quarter.  What this means is that unless you too have a compelling strategic plan that you put into action, your competitors are going to be stealing away your clients each year. strategy2  

5 ways to keep up with the competition!

1. Study your Competitors and look for disruptions in the marketplace.

A disruption in the marketplace is an event such as a change in leadership, quarterly profit loss, or other significant event that could affect your competitors ability to service their clients effectively.  If you can identify a disruption, then that is your opportunity! One easy way to study your competitor is by setting a Google Alert on your competitors.  With a Google Alert you can always be notified immediately when your competitor publishes ANYTHING on the web.  Did they just submit a press release to launch a new product or service? You can know about it instantaneously! Step1-5competitors

2. Improve your online presence.

One way to stay ahead of your competitors is to make sure your company is everywhere your prospect is.  Content creation and content marketing is essential to make sure your competitors don’t leave you behind.  When working with clients of ours at StartRankingNow.com, I use a step-by-step process to figure out where clients should start with their content marketing strategy.  Basically if they have not passed “a”, they cannot go on to “b”.  Some of the things I look at are:
  • Blog and Social Media – Posting to your blog at least 2-4 times per week if not more and posting daily to the main social networks.
  • Email Marketing – Capturing emails and following up with the leads strategically by sending out 3-5 sales emails to new subscribers.
  • Content Marketing – Publishing new content such as Press Releases, infographics, guest blog posts, podcasts, interviews, ebooks, pictures, and much much more.  Create and publish 1-4 new high quality pieces of content each month.
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3. Create a strategic plan.

It is not enough to just DO.  There must be a reason and purpose and plan behind everything you put into action online.  For example let’s say you have 4 core products that you want to promote throughout the year.  It is not enough to promote your business.  You need to promote each of the products strategically.  You need to create a plan.  A marketing funnel that will drive traffic, capture leads, and convert sales. make-things-happen There is a saying that goes: If you aim for nothing, you will hit it every time. This is what goes on in a lot of businesses.  The business owner is so involved in just trying to get through the day to day stuff. They are busy working in their businesses not realizing that every day their competition is gaining new territory.  Before they know it, the phone stops ringing and it is only then that they decide to take a look at marketing. Don’t let the phone stop ringing. Are you ready to create a strategic plan for your business?  Isn’t it about time your brand was the one showing up all over the internet, and not your competitors?
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3 thoughts on “How Your Competitors Get Ahead of You…”

  1. Hi Nicole,

    Great list. This point you made here… “look for disruptions in the marketplace”… for me this is #1 most vital tip.

    If you can carve yourself out as different and offer the customer something new… Hello PayDay!!

    Naomi

    Reply
  2. Thanks for the great advice to continue to be ahead of the game. One should never be complacent and always be open to new strategies and plans for improvement.

    Reply

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