When a client wants to sign up to the Protege Program, they often ask: Will the Program help me be successful?
And my answer is a bit weird. Because it's not an answer. It's a question.
The question is: Do you have competition that's doing exceedingly well?
Competition: What do they have to do with your business?
Here's what competition will teach you:
1) Watch the advertising done by competition. Get your niche market's magazines. Get the periodicals. Get the newspapers. Get whatever you can possibly lay your hands on regarding your market. Then watch for the advertising. What you're looking for, is consistent advertising. Is the ad consistent?
If so, the business owner is not a fool. There is a definite demand for the product or service, and the advertising is working. Which is why she's repeating the ad over two, three, five years. Good marketers know that when something works, you keep at it, without dropping it like a hot potato (Amateurs do the exact opposite–and fail)
So if you have competition that's doing very, very well, guess what? Si, you've got a market that's red-hot. Of course, no one can help you become very good at what you do. That's upto you. No one can help you focus, that too is upto you. But is there a market? Sure–and your competition just told you that customers are more than happy to pay for the exact products/services that you're about to offer. Now it's upto you to make the best of the market potential.
2) Become a customer: Copycat Tactics are wonderful. But extremely dangerous to your business health. Because when you're copying someone, you're simply copying their tactics; you're just copying their emails; their direct mail. You know diddly squat about their strategy. Marketers have been known to lose tens of thousands of dollars upfront, to get customers on the back end. And if you simply follow blindly, you will lose at least a few thousands, before you figure that it's not the sales letter or the email or the tactics that generates the income. So don't copycat. Become a customer of a customer whose work you respect. Get inside the inner circle, because that's where the tactics and strategies are revealed in great detail. And where the real profits lie. So by becoming a customer of your competition, you can learn one heck of a lot.
3) Competition is good for you: You darned well know this, but I'll say it anyway. Competition makes it easier to sell your product. If your product is unique, be very, very nervous. First of all, you will have to educate your customers. If competition exists, then they've done some rudimentary education already. Which saves you a lot of trouble. Plus, you need to know that your customer doesn't ever buy a product or service the first time she sees it. She thinks about it. She mulls. She then decides to buy the product/service after a while. Your competition has got that customer thinking. And when you make your offer to the customer, she's thought about it long enough to buy from you, just because you happened to be in front of her at the first round.
Competition can teach you one heck of a lot. So when you become successful, send them a thank you card, will ya?
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[…] Why you need to send your competition a thank-you card […]