This is an interesting topic for inspiration today… What would it be like if, for one day, you completely ignored your competition and just focused on your own marketing?
What would you do?
Would you change your advertising methods? Change where you advertise? Completely rewrite your sales copy? Change your target market?
Or would you leave everything exactly as it is?
Personally, for my own copywriting services, I largely ignore my competition. Because no one IS my direct competition. I am not a commodity that can be farmed out and sold at discount, wholesale rates. I consider other copywriters to be my colleagues, not my competitors. Sure, I can learn things from them, but I don’t try to compete with them because we offer two different things – them, and me.
But what do you do when all you offer is a commodity? When widget X is sold by you, and 50,000 other retailers worldwide? What do you risk by ignoring your competition?
Well, nothing really. The real question you SHOULD be asking is what are you risking by paying too much attention to your competition?
When you watch what your competitors are doing every single day, you run the serious risk of running a reactive business instead of an instinctual one. You run the risk of losing your identity as a business, losing your edge, and losing what made you unique in the first place – and replacing it with “but we really are better than business X!”
What if, the next time your widget goes on sale at store X, you completely ignore it? What is the worst thing that could happen? If you’re already so far gone that you have completely lost your identity beyond “lowest price” type shoppers, then yes – you may see sales drop for a little while until the sale is over. But they won’t disappear. And you can get back to focusing on what makes YOUR business unique, what would make people want to buy from YOU – no matter what the price is.
Besides, if you really think about it, I doubt your customers are watching your competition as closely as you are, anyway…
Just some food for thought.
