You have competitors who are larger than you, so shouldn’t you just copy their digital marketing strategies if you want to succeed? NO!
Hey everyone, I’m Neil Patel and today I’m going to share with you why you shouldn’t copy your competitors business plan.
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#1: You don’t always know what’s happening with your competitor’s business
For example, just because they have a similar product to yours you don’t necessarily know why people prefer their product over yours. Online marketing is really tricky this way.
There could be something special about it, or they could have been in the marketplace so much longer that they build up so much brand credibility that they can get away with pretty much murder while you can’t, right?
#2: People make their changes based on opinions.
You don’t want to make changes based on opinions. You want to make changes based off of facts. A lot of times, your competitors are doing changes to their websites just because they feel like they want to do those changes. They have that gut feeling that this is going to work for them. Well, gut feelings don’t necessarily create multiple million dollar companies or billion dollar organizations. Data does. You want to use data to make changes on your website. That’s why I use CrazyEgg whenever I make changes on my website. I’m continually using it to run split tests. If I just copy someone it’s not necessarily going to work for me. I got to run tests to see what works for my audience.
#3: You’re different than your competition.
You need your own unique selling proposition especially with social media marketing. If someone’s already bigger than you copying them won’t make you bigger than them. You gotta be different, and by being different you need to create a unique selling proposition.
So, for example, if they’re a really big corporation, like I used to have a agency when I was younger and I used to compete with iProspect. iProspect would say, hey, we work with big brands like Coca-Cola and McDonald’s. Well, you know, a lot of people would come to me and be like, Neil, why should we hire you instead of iProspect? It shows in their job posting that hey, you get to work on accounts like Coca-Cola and McDonald’s. Well, on the flip side, if you work with me, you’re ging to talk with me.
You get that personalized experience, right? That was my unique selling proposition. I’d be like, “if you call me, you know I’m going to be picking up, and I’m going to be the one helping you”. I’m going to be the one who’s held responsible for your results, and they like that. I put myself in a different position than my competitors.
Did I ever beat them in size? No, but by making myself different and standing out I was able to grow my business much faster.
