best business statistics

Many new Small Businesses fail during the early years and one of the reasons attributed for the failure is their inability to beat the competition.

To be successful in your business and to be acknowledged as a successful small business entrepreneur, you have to adopt certain strategies that will enable you to outsmart your competitors and beat them.

1. Go Shopping Yourself:

If you are a manufacturer of certain products, you should go shopping yourself at least once a fortnight. By doing this you will be able to see how and where these products are being displayed, the price at which your competitors are selling their products and the type of packaging used. In fact purchasing of your competitors products on regular basis, testing them and comparing them with your products will be a very useful and productive exercise.

2. Become a member of a Professional Association:

As an entrepreneur it is very important that you become a member of a professional association related to your business or industry. Never, ever think that you can operate in a vacuum and succeed. By regularly attending their meetings, you will get the opportunity of meeting like minded people and your competitors too. Opportunities for gathering vital information and secrets abound in such meetings. Be watchful, grab them and implement them in your small business.

3. Gather Information about Your Competition:

You must have a plan whereby either you or one of your employees should order your competitors’ broachers, catalogues and price lists. This will give you very vital and useful information as to how these products are priced, advertised and promoted. Keeping this constant tab on your competitors will enable you to discover the reasons why some are more successful than you. This ongoing study will help you make very calculated changes in your price structure, marketing and advertising strategies.

4. Attend Trade Shows and Seminars:

Trade shows are places where you as a small business entrepreneur can make useful contacts with other entrepreneurs in your own field of activity and other allied fields as well. Viewing new developments, technologies and marketing methods will inspire and motivate you to develop your own business in those lines.

Attending seminars can be very useful, educative and a place to make useful contacts. These trade shows and seminars can open up new windows of opportunities for you.

5. Read Trade Magazines and Newsletters:

Subscribe to your industry or business trade magazine or newsletter. You will come across many things that you are not aware of, in manufacturing, advertising and marketing. These tips and tricks will help you fine tune some of your present strategies.

6. Address Meetings and Focus Groups:

Never miss an opportunity to address meetings related to your industry or business. It will also be wise to organize Focus Groups where you can obtain the views of the members regarding your products. The feedback thus obtained will help you make changes in your products and the marketability of your products.

7. Distribute Free Gifts, Vouchers and Coupons:

The whole world loves free gifts. Even millionaires love anything given free. You should take full advantage of this and promote your small business by offering free gifts. Whenever there are community gatherings, focus group meetings and other functions, try and distribute free gifts, discounted coupons and vouchers. You should ensure that you have your website URL, address and phone numbers embedded in all your items.

8. Have a Professional looking Website.

A well designed professional looking website is absolutely essential. By providing all the information about your business, products and services, it will add credibility to your small business.

Conclusion:

To succeed as a Small Business Entrepreneur is your ultimate goal and failure is not an option. Keep a watchful eye on your competition and implement these tips and strategies. It will not be long before your competitors disappear from the radar screen.

We have all heard the phrase, keep your friends close and your enemies closer. How true this rings for your business? Well, it is a matter of whether your business survives or fail!

We all know that setting up a business means taking a share of the market and defending it from your competitors. In doing your online or offline business, this is a fact. Hence it is imperative that you understand your competitors, whether direct or indirect, before you can be successful.

1. Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, Threats (SWOT) Analysis

To understand your competitors, you can perform a SWOT analysis. This is a good tool to analyse your competitors and yourself too. You should do this first before you even start up your business.

Review your competitors’ product offerings, price range, quality and features. Then you take stock of your own product range, features, price range and quality. By benchmarking your competitors’ products to your own, you can map out your competitors’ as well as your own strength and weaknesses. This will help you to formulate your strategies to compete more effectively. Use your strong points to challenge your competitors, don’t use your weak points to attack your competitors.

On the flip side of it, your competitors can challenge your weak areas to gain market share, so you have to make sure that your strong points are good enough to compensate for the weak ones.

Take note take your competitors’ weaknesses can be new market opportunities for you. And your weaknesses may be a threat to your business survival.

2. Distribution channel

Most products available in the market have complements and substitutes. Eg, a customer walks into a supermarket and wants to buy ham. However, he could not find ham, so he may choose to buy Spam instead. A buyer will always find a substitute for something that they can’t find.

So what does it mean? Well, having an effective distribution channel that can reach your target customers at their location will help you greatly in closing your sale.

3. Future Competitors

Apart from your existing competitors, you have to brace yourself for new competitors jumping into the market. By establishing a strong customer relationship and a good strategy, your business should be able to hold off new challenges.

In general, new entrants like to compete on pricing, ie they focus on low price. This strategy can work for you as a double edged sword. If the new competitor offer low priced and inferior quality products, then you can establish your brand as a superior quality product. However, if they offer superior quality products at a cheaper price, then you may have to engage in a price war.

All in all, you need to strategise your plan of attack and defence constantly. Only after you understand your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses and your own charateristics, can you formulate good strategies. With these information you can take advantage of your competitors’ weaknesses by using your strong points while defending your weakness from competitors’ attacks.

As the business environment is in constant fluid, you need to constantly know your enemy and know thyself as well.