Loading...
Answers
MenuHow should you talk to your competitors? What if you meet a competitor at a social gathering and he asks to see your work?
Example, if you run a marketing agency and your competitor also runs a marketing agency, should you be sharing samples of your work?
Answers
As a marketing agency, your work is designed to reach people and be publicly viewable anyway, right? So I don't see the problem. Why not share specimens that have already been shared with the world at large?
Today's competitor may be tomorrow's coworker or collaborator. Perhaps your peer might wish to hire you or bring you on as a partner some day ... or vice versa. Maybe the overlap between your services and skill sets is only partial. In some cases, I and my competitors team up to work with a single client; so we actually refer leads to one another.
If you're aloof and standoffish, then you may be closing doors to future opportunities. Since the risk of being open appears minimal, just relax and talk about the best work you do.
Well it can be socially awkward to say, "no, I'm sorry", and it can be pretty much impossible for some people to say that. The fact that you're asking the questions means you're looking for a way to not say that.
So instead, just show them some of your older and / or lower quality work. That way there's no bad blood, and you're only showing stuff that's old news, and you are also convincing them that you're doing lower quality work than you actually are, which will make them be more comfortable and therefore easier to out-compete, if you're out do do that.
You can use this knowledge to create marketing strategies that take advantage of your competitors' weaknesses and improve your own business performance. You can also assess any threats posed by both new entrants to your market and current competitors. Even if you are the only restaurant in town you must compete with cinemas, bars, and other businesses where your customers will spend their money instead of with you. With increased use of the Internet to buy goods and services and to find places to go, you are no longer just competing with your immediate neighbours. Competition is not just another business that might take money away from you. Read their marketing literature. If they are an online business, ask for a trial of their service.
Use a search engine to track down similar products. Websites can give you good tips on what businesses around the globe are doing in your industry sector. Phone them to ask for a copy of their brochure or get one of your staff or a friend to drop by and pick up their marketing literature. You will get a better idea of them and you might need each other one day, for example in collaborating to grow a new market for a new product. Do not just ask how well you are performing ask which of your competitors they buy from and how you compare. Use your judgement with any information they volunteer.
Draw up a list of everything that you have found out about your competitors, however small. If you are sure your competitors are doing something better than you, you need to respond and make some changes. It could be anything from improving customer service, assessing your prices, and updating your products, to changing the way you market yourself, redesigning your literature and website and changing your suppliers.
You should always follow the links to more detailed information from the relevant government department or agency. Any reliance you place on our information or linked to on other websites will be at your own risk. You should consider seeking the advice of independent advisors and should always check your decisions against your normal business methods and best practice in your field of business.
Besides if you do have any questions give me a call: https://clarity.fm/joy-brotonath
Related Questions
-
How do you know websites that are agencies using BuiltWith technology? E.g - Magento developers.
BuiltWith is awesome, but not for this. It only shows you what sites are built with the tech, and often Magento / Drupal developers have websites for themselves that are on simpler platforms (for example, a Magento developer isn't selling products so they don't need an ecommerce platform like Magento for themselves). Here's the list you need for Drupal: https://www.drupal.org/drupal-services Here's a list for Magento: http://partners.magento.com/partner_locator/search.aspx Hope that helps! Most platforms have developer / agency directories like this.Ryan DravingRD
-
How was Twitter able to become a leading company without attracting serious competition. It seems their service could have been copied easily.
Agreed. Pownce and FriendFeed were both hailed as Twitter competitors in the early days. In 2008 Twitter was consistently plagued by downtime as they had trouble scaling. However, the service was simple and easy to use and they did a great job getting early digital influencers and celebs onboard evangelizing the platform. When Twitter first got started they also had a suggested user list and recommended lots of famous people and digital influencers to follow. This created a bit of a self-fulfilling prophesy - those on the list would evangelize twitter helping to funnel even more people in and boosting their own popularity, etc.Brendan GahanBG
-
How much time do you spend on google (or other search engine) when you are searching informations on a specific topic ?
As a tech marketer - I am always looking for the fastest, cheapest yet reliable research in order to create competitive intelligence internal documents, stats for blog posts, etc. Some people live by the "if it isn't on the first page, it doesn't matter" when it comes to leveraging search engines as a research tool. However, often when we are looking for value, we have to realize that anything REALLY worthwhile these days from a content perspective is typically gated behind a web form, or nestled inside a blog post. So, expect to spend a few hours in order to get through all the form gates, and also make sure you're using as specific and direct search terms as possible - then getting more generic if results are not ideal. Some other tips: -Have a few "burner" email addresses setup with gmail or hotmail, etc. - these allow you to get content when filling out forms to get White Papers, Reports, Case Studies, etc. without your primary inbox getting stuffed with marketing emails. -In the form fill process, if available put "student" or "researcher" as typically sales reps pass by these "leads" when the form gets dumped into the CRM queue. -Don't forget specialty search sites and tools like Wolfram Alpha for more "numbers" derived searches. -Also, like your question here - always seek the wisdom of crowds in addition to machine learning algorithms! Hope this is helpful! Search on!Martin SchneiderMS
-
What are the best sources of competitive advantage for a fast growing Internet software company?
There's never a substitute for building your product and talking to customers. If you're not well versed in growth hacking, let's talk. Depending on your market, there's a variety of algorithmic ways to pursue customers and hundreds of API's to power the pursuit. The one insight I have here that isn't often mentioned is the number of high fidelity backlinks per an hour that you're able to produce. If you use http://ahrefs.com you'll notice that the highest growth ventures have a strong correlation with backlinks. (Causality is difficult to identify, but correlation isn't. ) The internet was built for land-grab tactics.Kumar TKT
-
I have been developing an idea on my own for sometime now. Recently,a potential competitor has surfaced. Should I reach out to them? What should I do?
Here are your options: You can only compete with them If you're able to either: A) Get a programmer: - Either raise necessary funds to hire one full time. See my answer on ("When is the right moment to approach investors?") - Use your own funds to hire a freelancer. See my answer on ("How do I get my game from Prototype to Demo?") - Or convince a developer to join you as a cofounder for equity. See my answers on that topic ("Where do I find a co-founder to join my team?" --And-- "How and or where do I find a stellar Partner/CEO") B) Learn how to program it yourself, and program it yourself - Either have enough time and motivation to learn programming fast enough (could be very difficult, depending on how far along you are, and what you're trying to program) - Or there are several methods you can potentially use (depending on the complexity of the app you need) to make an MVP without programming. For instance MIT App Inventor (http://ai2.appinventor.mit.edu/), or Marvel App (https://marvelapp.com/) Otherwise: A) Either see if you can join the competition. If you contact them and can convince them that you have something to contribute, they might let you join the team. See my answer on that topic ("How do I approach a business with an idea?") B) Or come up with another idea, and see if you can do steps A or B before someone else starts implementing the same idea Send me a message if you want to discuss any of these, or other options in more depth. In any case, I wish you the best of luck, LeeLee von KrausLV
the startups.com platform
Copyright © 2025 Startups.com. All rights reserved.
