What Competition?

When was the last time you took a look at what your competitors are doing online?  If it’s been a while since you even glanced you might be surprised at what you find.

Often when business begins to slow, the logical inclination is to blame the economy or pricing or something that is beyond our control.  It’s easy to see if our competitor’s parking lot is full while ours is empty or to see if  a competitor is advertising heavily on radio or TV or in print, but how often do we seriously look at our competitor’s website to see what they are up to and how that may be affecting our business?  When it comes to the Internet and web properties, viewing our competitors needs to be more than just whether they have changed their website or lowered prices or adopted a “free shipping” policy.  It needs to result in a detailed understanding of what they are doing versus what you are doing.

Without changing the look and feel of a website, is your competition suddenly getting a bigger percentage of visitors? Has the layout of their checkout page changed?  Are customers talking about your competitor online on Facebook or Twitter, maybe a group on LinkedIn or a video on YouTube?  Maybe your competitor’s information is Smartphone enabled.  If you don’t know the answers, you’re not doing your homework and your business may be sinking faster than you realize.

In a nutshell, companies that use the internet do better (are more profitable) than companies that don’t.  But using the Internet is not just having a website or a Facebook page. It’s using every tool at your disposal to attract, retain and convert internet traffic into satisfied customers. The list of available channels to promote your business seems to grow every month: email marketing, press releases, organic search engine optimization, paid advertising, display ads, social media, remarketing to past customers, videos, galleries, the list keep growing.

Many of these avenues aren’t expensive to use. An article by Jim Edwards that appeared on Business Advertising caught my attention. The headline was, “P&G To Lay Off 1,600 After Discovering It's Free To Advertise On Facebook”. This from Proctor & Gamble, a company with an annual advertising budget that tops 10 BILLION dollars.

So maybe money is tight. That doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t invest some time in learning about new opportunities to promote your business. Remember in your business YOU are an expert and your competitors aren’t really any smarter than you are. Your thoughts and opinions can easily sway potential buyers without trying to sell them. A well-crafted email explaining something about your business or your product doesn’t have to start with “buy this now” but can go a long way toward bringing a customer back  The bottom line is your bottom line. Look around and see what your competitors are doing. The internet provides more opportunities to promote your business than you can imagine. If you watch your competitors and try new things, it might not be long before your competitors are watching you.