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You Don’t Have to Run From the Online Competition, Part 3

Michael Myles — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 20:13:34 +0000

This is a continuation of the article, You Don’t Have to Run From the Online Competition, Part 2 where I discussed the Barriers to Entry and You Don’t Have to Run From the Online Competition, Part 2 where I discussed Learning from Industry Leaders and Networking with the Competition.

Develop Your Own Style, Be Unique

As noted above, you should be a unique entry into that niche market. In case you haven’t noticed, there is already a ProBlogger, a Technorati, and an eBay, so why try to copy, or even emulate them closely? Sometimes there is a great need for improving a known business or product. Ask Overstock how that whole eBay competition thing is going? (Of course it doesn’t help for the CEO to be nominated and receive honorable mention in the “Worst executive of the year award” either.) You don’t need to be an exact copy of something that already exists. There may be room for one more, but there might not be room for one more exact copy. Develop your own business style and don’t worry about being an exact copy, that will make things worse. You should know who the competition is, you should know generally how they operate, and then you should do your own thing and not worry about what they do. Over the past 10-15 years I have developed a few new products and brought them from a thought in my head to a manufactured item that our company could sell. Part of product development is working to brand that product. What is the name going to be, the packaging, a logo and so on. Because this particular product was going to be sold at conventions all across the country, it would be seen by attendees walking by a vendor’s booth in a crowded hall of sometimes 500-600 different vendors. So the packaging had to stand out. I took some squares of Astrobright paper (the neon colored papers) in all different colors and with my eyes shut, threw them on the floor. When I opened my eyes I picked the very first color that I saw, a very bright neon yellow, and this became the trademark color buyers looked for when they walked the crowded floor. It stood out among a sea of browns and earth tones and even if a buyer didn’t know what the product was, it caught his or her eye and drew them into the booth. Learn to develop your own style and you will be rewarded by standing out among a crowded field of earth tones.

Stay Focused and Be Positive

It can be very easy to get discouraged when entering a new field or niche market. The competition has been doing this a much longer time, they have developed relationships you don’t have, traffic you can’t generate, and revenue you only wish to achieve. Set some short term and long term goals and try to stick by them. Don’t worry about the fact that you can’t directly compete yet, that takes time. Try to stay as positive as you can and focus on the job at hand. For those of us who are never satisfied with meritocracy, it can be a challenge to stay focused. Whatever short term goal we reach should have been higher and whenever we do reach that goal, we have already looked at why we didn’t reach the one above instead. Do you watch any of those semi-crazy people in May climbing Mount Everest? They can not go immediately from base camp to the summit. They start at Base Camp, and there are several camps along the way to the top where they have to stop and acclimate, sometimes for weeks, before moving on to the next camp. Focus on that next camp and don’t worry about the top until it is time. Even Google didn’t become the monster they are overnight. They couldn’t even spell Googol (a math term for 1 followed by 100 zeros) and ended up spelling it with a “gle” instead. They were looking at branding not how do we take over the world and beat Microsoft and Yahoo (at least not the first day).

Be Your Own “Main” Competition

This may be the easiest step to accomplish, at least it usually is for me. Be your own worst ~~enemy~~ competition. Now that you know who the competition is, what they do, and how they operate. Forget about them and get better than yourself. I can always seem to shoot myself in the foot given enough time and space, but I also compete harder internally than I do when looking at others. Review what you are doing from time to time and grade yourself. Where can you improve and where did you screw up. Some of us, at least I do, learn more when we screw up than when we succeed. Don’t make a mistake and not learn from it. The worst thing is repeated a known mistake over and over again. In a recent interview with Darren Rowse of ProBlogger titled, Rare Interview With Darren Rowse Of Problogger, Darren was asked about who he considers his main competition. His answer was no one, because he learns from everyone.

Who do you consider your main competitor(s)? This might sound like a cop out of an answer – but I don’t really consider any blog to be a competitor – not because they are not good but because I consider them all to be blogs that I’m a fan of, learn from, partner with and be inspired by. There are so many blogs about blogging that I follow – too many to mention here – but you can see many of them listed at http://www.45n5.com/top100/

You can often be your best and worst competition. I try to remind myself that the only person I need to get better than is myself, and most of the time that is hard enough.

Some Concluding Thoughts

There are times when you can look at a new niche market and decide it really isn’t a good match for your company, but don’t automatically make the decision to not enter a market just because the competition is strong. You may get discouraged at first, but with some good planning and perseverance your business can become a success in a crowded niche market along with many other long time players. Learn what you can from the leaders in the marketplace, develop your own brand and unique business style and stay focused on the goal at hand. Just because a particular field is competitive doesn’t mean you have to turn tail and run. What are the biggest challenges your company faces with online competition? Does it effect how you run your business? Leave a comment and let us know. [ Scott Fillmer, a guest author for Allinanchor.com, is an online business owner and author of five blogs and you can find his site at scottfillmer.com ]

You Don’t Have to Run From the Online Competition, Part 2

Michael Myles — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 20:13:26 +0000

This is a continuation of the article, You Don’t Have to Run From the Online Competition, Part 1 where I discussed the Barriers to Entry.

Learn From the Industry Leaders

The industry leaders got to be the leaders for various reasons, but one might be that they know what they are doing. It is really amazing how much you can learn in any particular niche market by how the leaders of that market run their businesses. Find out who these leaders are and how long they have been involved in the field of interest. By no means should you ever just copy what they are doing and call that your business strategy (see be unique below). That may work for the white-labels in the grocery store but in the world of online business it can quickly make you the target of a more powerful entity, and your reputation will probably be a less favorable one in the long run. Learn, but don’t copy. Make a study of these companies and find out everything you can (legally) about who they are and how they operate. This will give you further information about step number one above and you may find you really can’t compete, or it may reveal a vacancy that needs to be filled. It will also give you some insight on what to prepare for in the coming months. Make a list and do some research. If you don’t do it on a spreadsheet, at least do it in your head. Find the top 10 or 20 companies you believe will be in direct competition with your plans. Write down what you think their strengths and weaknesses are and how you can improve on those weaknesses you find. Do a Google or Yahoo search and find out what you can. Not just the normal rigmarole, find those advanced search features and do as in depth of a search as possible and add to your list. There are many good tools online to help with competition research. Compete is a great resource for comparing the traffic on several different sites at the same time, and Alexa has a similar comparison for traffic. For auction research, Terapeak is a good place to start, and if you want some good basic notices, try Google Alerts to stay up to date with what is going on in the trenches.

Network with the Competition

Just because you are in competition (or even perceived competition) doesn’t mean you are going to be hated, should hate the other businesses, or even feel any animosity or jealousy towards the competition. That will probably get you nowhere and will just make you miserable. Develop some friendships, or at least acquaintances, with the competition. You might be surprised by the response. Several years ago when I got involved in an industry I knew nothing about, the first thing I did was go around to every business owner I could find and do a so-called informal meet and greet. Our business was product based, geared towards 10-20 national conventions a year, so getting to know the competition on a first hand basis was almost a requirement, and it worked. I am not going to say that they just handed over all their secrets but you would be amazed at how much information the competition will freely give out if you just stop and listen. With an online business this may be commenting on their blog articles, sending an email in response to something on their site, or even meeting up with them at a convention, like the upcoming Blog World Expo, and just introducing yourself and your company. I made some good friends with my direct competition and more often than not, you can help each other out when needed. So go network with the competition, if not for any other reason than to say, here I am and I am not going anywhere either. Do go in over zealous, you are an outsider to them and cultivating a relationship with another business is important, and takes time. Stay tuned for part 3… Coming up [ Scott Fillmer, a guest author for Allinanchor.com, is an online business owner and author of five blogs and you can find his site at scottfillmer.com ]

You Don’t Have to Run From the Online Competition, Part 1

Michael Myles — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 20:13:14 +0000

Is your company or business in a competitive industry, is there any way not to be? Are you thinking about moving into a specific niche market that is already saturated? You don’t always have to just move on to something else if the field or topic you are interested in proves to be a very competitive arena. You may have to do things better, be unique, and operate more efficiently than the competition, but you don’t have to automatically make the decision to leave for a less competitive area. Your business may have the talents and skills to run with the competition, survive, and be successful. Usually, at least in the free world markets, you already have competition because you have more than one entity providing the same product or service, so there is probably room for one more. Keep in mind, success in a competitive market may not be the “number one” spot. Many retail businesses are successful and are not Wal-Mart, so be careful how you set your goals and measure your success. In this article we are going to look at a few ways to compete in an already competitive field.

What are the Barriers for Entry

Before you actually enter into a competitive field for the first time you really do need to look at what the barriers to entry might be for your company or website. Do a quick analysis of what it takes to get into a particular niche market, and be honest with yourself or your company about what you find. You might find that you really don’t want to take the time or energy required to be competitive in that market anyway. If this is the case, you have lost nothing (nor risked anything) and there is no need to advance any further. Just stop now and find an article on how to run a successful online business like, 10 Steps to a 7 Figure Income From Your Site, and then come back and read how to compete with the competition. If you can compete, you have work to do, start working on some lead generation techniques, make a business and marketing plan, and of course, check out the competition. I received an email recently from a gentleman in Australia who had developed a fairly high traffic site and his last post said, for various reasons, he was shutting down the site and would not continue that particular entity. Seeing a well developed site with good rankings all around disappear was a waste, to me. A waste of a good asset, time, and not to mention money spent. So I emailed him and asked if he would consider selling the website instead. His response was interesting.

Scott, Sorry I have no intention of selling any asset. You have got great content however the SEO blogosphere is really crowded Regards, Scott wxyz

Besides the fact that there seems to be a large volume of us “Scott’s” around online, it wasn’t that he didn’t want to sell the website to me, I understand that, it was the initial reaction he had to my own blog I author. “It is really crowded in there”. Besides misinterpreting my blog’s focus, it may me think… should I just quit now then? Online eCommerce and user friendly storefront applications like Yahoo Stores, ProStores, Miva Merchant, and several others make the financial barriers affordable for just about any business. So if the barriers are not totally financial, lets look at some others.

Is this a totally saturated market? Can it handle “one more”?
Can you afford the marketing, promotion, development, staff?
Do you REALLY have the time needed to make this a successful project?
What ethical practices will you have to do to be seen on Google and Yahoo?
How big is the top, and who are the players?
Do you honestly know what you are doing, i.e. do you have the experience and know-how required?

Perhaps some people or businesses should be more honest with themselves and get out while the getting is good. But if you have a competitive spirit and understand the barriers to entry, and are willing to climb those barriers, dive in and get started. The longer you wait, the more ground you are going to loose to the competition. Stay tuned for part 2… Coming up [ Scott Fillmer, a guest author for Allinanchor.com, is an online business owner and author of five blogs and you can find his site at scottfillmer.com ]

How Top Brands Stay on Top: Advertising

Desmond White — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 18:57:54 +0000

Do you ever wonder how top brands like Coca-Cola, Microsoft and Google can always compete with the best of them? It’s all about how much they spend on advertising.

So here are the numbers by percent of revenue spent on advertising in 2006, believe me these were shocking to me too.

Microsoft - $11.5 billion (20% of revenue)
Coca-Cola - $2.5 billion
Yahoo - $1.3 billion (20% of revenue)
eBay - $871 million (15% of revenue – most on Google advertising)
Google – $188 million
Starbucks – $95 million

It is nice to see the comparison of on and off-line products. This gives us a bit of an understanding on how the large company’s stay on top with their advertising, but it also shows that they do it in different way’s. Google does it cheaper because their aim is to turn out great products instead of great ads. Coca-Cola spends much more on trying to deliver the perfect ad that will captivate many at one time, therefore turning out mass sales to offset their large advertising budget.

But then Starbucks spent the least at $95 million on it’s advertising last year and did it in a way that is designed to create a brand for the culture and a happy repeat customer. But in all fairness to Microsoft and Yahoo a lot of that advertising money spent is for things other than search. It would be of interest to get the numbers on advertising specifically to have a fair comparison between Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.

Brand Management is Actually Important

Michael Myles — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 12:50:30 +0000

Earlier this year one of my clients was losing hundreds of thousands of dollars a month due to nothing other than a lack of brand management. His clients would purchase his product, and then do research regarding the product on the Internet after the sale. The problem that my client faced was that all the information on the Internet was bad press and negative remarks regarding his offering. I think it goes without saying (although I will anyways) that no matter your business, you will always have dissatisfied clients. The more clients you have, the greater the number of dissatisfied clients you will accrue. It’s a simple matter of percentages. A certain percentage of those dissatisfied clients will want to broadcast their bad experience on the Internet. The process of mitigating the broadcasting of these bad experiences and instead creating a positive reflection of your brand is called “brand management“.

Brand management is not something that only large organizations need to be concerned with. Businesses of all sizes who wish to improve their percieved value should be actively engaged in brand management.

While many of the marketing activities an organization is already participating in will frequently overlap into the realm of brand management, they still need to pro-actively manage their position on the Internet. For my client, this was realized through blog posting, press releases, and podcasts. This was all it took to take his brand to a positive (well, at least non-negative) position. This took only about 2 months to achieve, and his losses due to negative press on the Internet was almost completely mitigated. Instead of just averting the negative, we could also have continued work to bring his brand to the point where when customers and prospects researched his product on the Internet they were even more sold than before they had looked.

This is the ultimate goal of brand management; bring your brand to the point where when prospects look for information on your offering they are pre-sold at every point.

This is the ‘why’ of brand management. In future posts I’ll cover some of the ‘how’ of brand management. It’s more important than most would acknowledge, and should be a part of ever marketing plan.