You Must Know Who Your Competitors Are
Possibly the weakest area that new online marketers have in their business is the lack of knowledge on who their main competitors are.
Now you've got to be careful in defining your competitors to begin with. If you sell some type of product that has a little twist to it that makes it unique, you can't go do an online search and find that 300,000 companies have some type of product that has some general similarity to yours. If you tried to search them out you'd give up before even starting.
No! This means that you first must find if anybody is offering the unique feature you've added to the product that makes it different. Does another company offer 
something that meets the same need from a different solution?
The most important reason that you want to know who your main competitors are is because you will then know how you can position your product against them to ensure that your potential customers understand the difference.
This is pretty easy to do, just find them online and check out the whole process they go through to service their customers. What types of ads do they use? How is the Web site set up? How are they positioning their product and what are its key selling points. What about things like pricing, means of delivery and any other type of services that are offered?
What if you find no competition in your specific space? That may not be good. It's quite possible that nobody has been able to figure out how to profitably offer the particular product or service you've thought of. Either way, you should conduct tests to check out the feasibility of your offering. If it looks ok, you should then roll out a full campaign or set up a quality site to promote it.
Competitors are a great spring you can push against to see how far you can possibly go, and the road you'll have to travel to get there. Make sure you check them out and use them for a mirror to help you make the decisions that will need to be made.
Other Niche Marketing Resources:
Niche Marketing - Find Your Niche!
Niche Marketing Considerations: Beef as a Case Example
Niche Marketing: Targeting the Best Prospects
The Two Faces of Niche Marketing
Niche Marketing - How to Find Your Perfect Niche Market
Niche Marketing: One-Page Wonders and Microsites
The Perfect "Niche Marketing" Example
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Tracked on: June 14, 2008 10:26 PM | Permalink to Trackback