Filter The Noise

It doesn't matter what industry you are in, there is always competition. Rather than fearing competition, I encourage it in any industry that I am involved in, because it makes me become that much better at what I do. A lot of people think there is only so much they can grow their business because there is always a larger fish in the pond. But I think that any entrepreneur, better yet- every person- can dominate their industry, if they learn how to handle the following:

The BEST Consumer Experience: It doesn't matter whether you are offering a paid service or product, a free one (like a blog), or even if you are working for someone. There is a consumer for everything and you have to deliver 200% to that consumer. If you are a business owner, you have to deliver 200% of what the customer expects. If you are a blogger, deliver something that people can go "WOW" to. If you are an employee, stick out in the crowd and really take control of your career and the consumer for your skills (the employer) should really see you as an asset to their company.

Approach With A Different Touch: There are a handful of people that can do what you are doing, but are you the only one that can deliver something a certain way? We all have our favorite types of food (Italian, Mexican, Indian, etc.), but we all have one place we choose to go to, to eat those favorite types of food. Why do we have favorites for our favorites? Because they deliver like no other. If you learn how to deliver with your own style and a way that no one person or company can, you will be building a brand right there.

Explore New Horizons: Too many people want to keep exploring what has already been explored. So they can only achieve what has been achieved. If you start exploring what nobody has explored before, chances are you will be able to achieve what nobody has been able to achieve before. Essentially, maximum recognition for your skill or product.

Get People to Compare: You do what people do, but you do it 10x better or you offer a 10x better product. People then compare. If people are able to compare your greatness to someone else's "averageness" then you should be able to dominate your market, one customer at a time. People will spread the word for you, instead of you having to lead them into a box, where only your product is available.

Acknowledgment Is Confidence: Going back to the previous point, if you can acknowledge that there are other strong players in the industry and point that out to your consumers, it shows that you don't fear competition. When you are confident enough to acknowledge others for their skills (or lack thereof), and know you will be able to capture the audience regardless, people will automatically see that you are strong and confident in your abilities to provide. This may include acknowledging another company for a rock star product, but then consumers see that you have a bunch of rock star products. Or sticking out in a group of people a company is looking to promote, where everyone has excellent skills, but it is a no brainier to see that you have the most skills.

Build A Loyal Customer Base

Check out The Loyalty Effect (click here)

Businesses are always focusing on how to bring in new customers or users to their services, but sometimes lack to think that instead of spending tremendous amounts of time on how to bring in a new audience, you can potentially make far more with a LOYAL customer base. Before I go on, let me just say that you should always be working to build a bigger base of customers, but that shouldn’t sway you away from keeping an eye on creating a strong and repeat customer base.

The scenarios…

Let’s take a look at a mechanic. Mechanics are either good or they are not. If they can diagnose the problem, fix it, and clearly tell their client what was wrong, more often than not they will get repeat business from the same customer. In another scenario, if a mechanic were to play games or even show lack of knowledge/ability to resolve a problem, chances are they won’t see repeat business; in addition to have the person tell five other people that a certain mechanic can’t get the job done.

Next, let’s look at a web service. Say you are providing a data tracking service for people. You charge $10/month for unlimited use and data tracking. If you have 1,000 clients and you increase your client base by 20% each month you will be building your sales month after month. If you are losing 30% of your clients month after month and bringing in that same 20%, it is not benefiting your company because in addition to losing out on revenue, you are spending money in terms of marketing. If people don’t stick around, YOU LOSE MONEY!

A basic rule of thumb goes to show that if you invest more time, money, and efforts into taking care of what you already have, then focus on growing, you will be coming out ahead in the long run. If you have a loyal customer base- your customers also market and live your product in the long run. Even if you compensate the 30% loss of clients with the same amount of new customers, your customers don’t live your product so you won’t spread within their communities.

Besides the general situations…

Forget about everything from a marketing prospective and revenue flow for a minute. If I am running a business where I am selling lemonade and I have the whole neighborhood coming to my stand everyday for five years, it shows that I have built a strong and loyal customer base. Now I get innovative and change my lemonade making strategy- because I think it will “taste better and be more energizing,” but instead most people end up not liking it at all. The consequences would show that generally most people will be willing to give my lemonade stand another chance since they have been coming to me for the past five years. Let’s say I end up losing a permanent 20% of my customers. But now let’s say that I was focusing on bringing in new customers, instead of having repeat customers. Now I lose 80% of my customer base and word spreads that “nobody should come to my lemonade stand.” Virally- bad things spread quicker if there is nobody to defend a problem from a different viewpoint. Since I had only 20% repeat customers and 80% new daily, the 80% will be bad mouthing my stand while only 20% potentially defend me. If I had more loyal customers than new customers, the bad experiences might have been contained better and people could possibly be a little easy going due to my failed innovation giving them a bad experience.

Overall, marketing efforts can become costly if you are not earning repeat customers to your business. If you build on top of your existing customer base and the majority of people keep coming back, THAT is when marketing efforts and ROI really shows up. Along with the fact that if people have a bad experience with a business -besides in terms of "bad service"- that they have been a loyal customer to, they will probably give it another chance...people that have no been a loyal customer to a business, who visit a business for the first time and have a bad experience, will probably never come back due to them assuming its how the business always operates.

Spread Your Brand

You have probably heard that YOU need to live your brand as an entrepreneur, but maybe you haven't heard that your CUSTOMERS need to live it also. In the video, I explain how having your customers live your brand can increase exposure, how you can do it, and other brands that have customers or users live their brand.



If you are really cleaver, people live your brand and don't even know it ;-)


How do you have your customers or users live your brand?

Learn From Competitors

In most businesses, it’s common to have competition. In fact, I think there is some sort of competition in every business. Even a lemonade stand has competition because there is probably another kid down the block who has a slushy stand. If you are running a professional service, like a law firm or medical practice, you also have competition. Running a web 2.0 service or business can be really competitive because users get to chose from numerous possibilities across the web. You probably get the point that there is competition anywhere and everywhere. I’m going to talk about how you can analyze your competition and acquire their good parts an implement them into your business model. I often speak of providing a great service or sell quality products, which can help attract new customers by viral marketing, but often times that simply is not enough to draw in a big crowd around your businesses product or service.

When I was a young boy, my parents always told me to be nice to everyone and try to adapt other kids’ good qualities and not their bad habits. I think this really explains how I do business now. I am always analyzing my competitors and seeing what they are doing better than I am and I often times implement what they are doing better in my business. This usually gives me leverage over them because I still provide the great customer experience I have been, in addition to what I have adapted from the competition.

How do I “Analyze” My Competition?

- Figure out how they are attracting the customers I am not.
- In retail business, I try to see if they have a better location or better property than I do.
- On the web, I try to see if my competitions interface is more user friendly than mine.
- Find out how they promote their product/service.
- Analyze how they handle daily operations.
--See how I can implement everything my competition does well, into my business.

By figuring out how competitors are attracting customers I am not, it gives me an idea of how their promotions are working to reach audiences my promotions are not. For future marketing, I get a prospective of how to appeal to those customers.

If my competitors business is located at a major intersection, it shows that they are probably getting more customers by visibility. Some of my businesses don’t have the best visibility so I tend to have to advertise more in some markets. I try to put most businesses up where there is high visibility so I rarely run into this situation.

In a web-based business, it is probably –by far- the most important thing to have an easy to use interface. People really hate when the product search process is web 1.0 and now a day’s people really want “1 Click Shopping.” With a web service, you have to make sure that the user-friendliness is better than your competitors; otherwise you can count on losing potential users.

I see how many competitors are promoting products and some of my biggest competitors in retail business really blow advertising dollars like it’s a walk in the park. I don’t take an approach where I blow a lot of advertising dollars in most businesses, but price my products lower than my competitors, so while they might attract more customers by reaching an audience that doesn’t know about them, my customers market my products by word of mouth. However, I do find that there are some marketing tactics that work really well, which I learn through my competitors.

I would say if you really want to learn how your competitors handle and do business. Try out their service or product. It is really the #1 way you will learn how they work. I own many fast food businesses and I am always visiting my competitors. I judge the experience I have, what I like and dislike about it, and see how I can capitalize on the good and bad things they are doing. By “capitalize” I mean implement the good things I feel they are doing and stay away from the bad things I experience.

Overall, there are plenty of ways to run an analysis on your competitors, regardless of any industry that you are doing business in. I think it really is necessary to learn everything you can about your competitors to really provide better products and service than them. If you implement all the good things they do, in addition to the good things you do, your product/service might end up at the winner with the customer base. Learning from your competition doesn't even have to do with direct business. You can learn from anybody in your industry that is your competitor.

How do you learn from your competition?

A Bigger Market Share

(Just a joke!)

It's a big deal. What market share your company has vs the competition. In order to obtain a bigger market share it is obvious that people have to love what you offer vs your competition. It has to be better.

So how do you go on about improving your product or service to grasp a bigger market share?
You need to review your current competition: how are their sales tactics, how do they portray their product, and how they market themselves as "better" than you or other competition.

After you have reviewed how they act, you need to do a self-evaluation on how you compare to them. Ask yourself, how you can improve things to their level, or how to exceed their level. How can the public view you as a better source for their wants and needs than their current provider?

The key of the game can be capitalizing on your opponents weakness. Now I know this may sound like a game, but you can really gain off of offering something that your competition cannot or currently does not offer.

-----> These are just a few preliminary questions to ask yourself, in other words it's a start, there is obviously more to it, but it's to get the ball rolling.