This space has seen a lot of articles detailing how to build a marketing strategy and how to execute that strategy to greatest effect. That’s all excellent material and very important to achieving success with your business, but before you can devise a marketing strategy, you first have to understand your competition.
Defining the Competition
Who is your competition? If you don’t have a definitive answer to this question, you need to take some time to figure it out. The key to being successful in any market is finding your niche in that market. Are you going to have the lowest prices? Are you going to carry the most unique items? In order to find the answers to these questions, you first have to know your competition and which roles they fill. If you are going to try to push someone out of a specific niche, you need to at least be aware of who all is filling that niche.
How Competitive Are They?
Once you’ve identified your competition, you need to determine how competitive they really are. Do they only carry a handful of items similar to yours? Do your inventories match almost exactly? These questions will help you better understand how to find an unoccupied niche, or how best to approach attacking and usurping an existing niche.
Evaluate Strengths and Weaknesses
Once you’ve determined the niche you’re going to shove your way into, you need to evaluate your and your competition’s strengths and weaknesses. You don’t want to challenge their strength with your weakness. You want to challenge their weakness with your strength. You also want to shore up any weaknesses you may have so that you can stand up to someone else trying to carve a share out of your niche.
Marketing begins with knowing your competition. It’s about knowing who they are, how they operate, and how best to strategize around them. If you are ignoring your competition, you’re not capitalizing on your earning potential.
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