What You can Learn from Your Competition

Competition is a staple in the business world and it is certainly a given when it comes to Internet marketing. Instead of ignoring your competition, though, recognize that you can learn valuable lessons from them and make a point to check out as much of your competition as possible.

Discover what Your Competition has to Offer

When you find out what your competition has to offer their customers, you can use this information to make sure you are offering more. For example, if you and your competition are selling similar products, what color choices does your competition offer? What is the price difference between what your competition is selling their products for and what your prices are? What about shipping? In order to bring in new business and retain much of your customer base, you will need to stay competitive. You may gain some fiercely loyal customers by offering exceptional customer service or by going the extra mile but by and large you will need to stay competitive in terms of price and quality.

Discover what Your Competition Doesn’t Offer

Finding out what your competition doesn’t offer is just as important as finding out what they do offer. If they have limited varieties of a particular item, perhaps you could offer more. If they don’t ship internationally, perhaps you could ship internationally and corner that market. Offering something the competition doesn’t is a strategic marketing technique that savvy Internet marketers use to gain new customers and maintain their customer base.

Check out Competition Websites

Study competition websites and measure them against yours. Are they attractively designed and user friendly? Do they offer fresh and useful content that is easy to find? What does your competition have that you don’t? What do you have that your competition doesn’t? By closely studying your competition, you will be better equipped to improve upon your website and customer offerings.

Don’t Badmouth the Competition

Never badmouth your competition, either to customers or other Internet marketers no matter how ineffective you think they are. Your reputation is everything in this business and you don’t want to be known for badmouthing the competition. Remember, word of mouth travels faster on the Internet and if you have something negative to say about the competition, not only will it be repeated, but it will be traced right back to you.

You can learn a lot from your competition if you will take the time and effort to see what they are up to every now and then. You may learn ways you can improve your website and you may learn more about your customers by discovering what they want and what they don’t want when you visit competition websites. Competition is a good thing. It makes better Internet marketers of us when we have to work hard to shine above the rest.