How to Look at Competitors to Reduce Your Own Risk
How to Look at Competitors to Reduce Your Own Risk
Before you create a new product or service, it’s always a good idea to look around at what’s going on in the market, just to see what’s going on in real life.
This real-life-look gives you a glimpse into what’s working in the market currently and what isn’t. Importantly, it helps you understand what your customers are already seeing in the market and how problems are already being solved.
Looking around before you create can save you precious resources. It’s a way of lowering your risk and making your product creation less of a leap into the unknown.
The idea here isn’t about copying and pasting someone else’s ideas and making them your own. No. The idea is about gathering inspiration and ideas to create products based on your own experience, perspective, and expertise.
What you are looking for here is an understanding of what customers are expecting from companies like yours. You want an understanding of how things look from your customer’s perspective. That’s what you really want to know and it’s an important step in defining your business’ wedge.
Where do I start?
So, what makes a good comparative competitor? Who can you both compare yourself to and learn from? Or, as I ask, who are your Inspo-Competitors?
Should you learn about the competitors who could take your customers (or that currently serve them) or should you learn about the competitors who inspire you? Should you look at the ones who are way ahead of you? Or the ones that appeared after you started out?
It might not surprise you that the best mix of competitors to look at is a bit of all these. You want a mix that will give you the most realistic view of your niche. Realistic. You want to look at the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Any time you look at your market in this way, your goal is to reduce your own risk. You want to create things that customers need, things that solve their problems. You want to look at what competitors are offering, how they are offering it, and how they are talking about it.
You want to learn from (their) experience.
How do I…?
When you take a look at your competition, it doesn’t have to be a deep dive involving a full review of their SEO or a complex foray into trying to understand how they are doing financially.
What you are looking for is more high-level than that.
You want to ask yourself questions like:
What are my competitors creating? Is it courses or one-on-one consulting or books?
What’s the tone? Is it humorous or serious?
Who are their target customers?
How long have they been around?
What is their background story? How did they come about?
Which ones are doing something similar to my business? Which are doing something quite different? (And why do you think that is?)
How do they promote themselves?
As you do this, track not only the answers to these questions, but also your thoughts about your findings.
Why is that piece so important?
Because your opinions come from your own experience and absolutely need to be fed into the process of creating and running your business. Yours is the perspective from which you are growing your business and it counts! At the same time, this review of your competitors is a way of reality-checking yourself within the bigger picture.
It’s the balance of the two that will move you forward.
It also moves you to the next step in defining your business’ wedge.
Want to read more about about Inspo-Competitors? Or maybe about the next step in defining your business’ wedge?
Stay tuned,
Julie
With a master’s degree in economics and 20+ years’ experience in market research and business planning, I decided to use my skills in a new way by creating The Idea Compass. At the heart of this venture is this newsletter but there are some other easy ways to work with me when you are ready:
Looking to run some of your own experiments? Well-established freelancing and product platforms are a great place to run them. You can spend more time honing your offer and less time on the nuts and bolts of marketing. I’ve put together a short resource describing how some of the major platforms out there today work.
But before you do that experimenting, give yourself some clear direction! Check out my just-published book on Amazon: Wedge: Define Your Niche. Grow Your Business.
