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Keys to Business
How To Eliminate Your Competition Without Bloodshed
(c) 1999 L.D. Publishing
By Larry Dotson
The Add Me! Newsletter
*** ISSUE #42 *** (Add
Me, Inc http://www.addme.com)
So how do you eliminate your competition without bloodshed? You must create a
"niche" for your
business. A niche is something that makes your business different than
your competitors. To
compete with other businesses nowadays (especially online) you need something that
nobody else can copy.
One Of A Kind!
First you must know who your competitors are. Is your business
the only one of it's type? I doubt it. If so, it won't be for long. Do you
know your exact target audience? If not, you will have to find out this
information before creating any kind of niche. Below are two ways to come up with a
competition eliminating niche.
1. Just Ask?
The first way to come up with a niche is to think like your target audience or
customers. Know their exact needs, wants, goals, problems and interests.
There's two ways to do this: The first way is to put yourself in their shoes, think like
them. The second way is to give them polls and surveys to find out what they're
thinking.
Pick a niche that none of your competitors are using. If you can't find one
that your competitors aren't using pick one to improve.
2. Just Think!
The second way to come up with a niche is to use your brain power. Ask
yourself questions like: How can I set myself apart from my competition?
What could I offer that they can't? Imagine or daydream that your
business is on top of all your competitors. What "niche" put your business at
the top in your head? Now, if you keep asking your brain these questions your mind will
eventually start shooting out more ideas than you can handle. One of those ideas may be
the niche you're searching for.
Now that you have your niche that's just half the battle. You must test it. Does
your niche appeal to your target audience? Will it attract people away from your
competition? If it does, you're done, until your competition comes up with a better
"niche". If your niche doesn't, than repeat the process above and test a new
niche until it works. If you want to eliminate your competition and be successful you will
use this process several times in your business life.
By Antoin O Lachtnain Email: antoin@nua.ie
Web: http://www.nua.ie/making_it_work/
1 July 1999 Published By: Nua Limited Vol 3. No. 8
Cheetahs and Elephants
It's old hat to say that the Internet is fundamentally changing business. It's now pretty
much accepted wisdom to say that many sectors will be rocked by the changes that are
coming. The only question is who will benefit and who will lose out as a result.
The quickest way to benefit is to build something new, from the ground up. As a result,
this will surely be remembered as the year and the decade of the start-up. Relatively
small businesses with no track record are going up head-to-head with the big incumbents. A
lot of them will ultimately fail or be gobbled up, but a surprising number of them appear
to be succeeding.
The reason is that these companies are very light-footed, very nimble. They can move very
quickly, in a timescale that impresses venture capitalists and makes large amounts of risk
capital available. They can get the money together to quickly launch a brand. They can put
in place systems that can quickly deliver a very impressive product. They can cut prices
in order to gain market share. They do not carry any of the baggage of old, established
companies.
However, they also lack a lot of the assets of larger, older companies. They generally do
not have:
- a large number of personal relationships with suppliers and customers
- a physical distribution and support network for sophisticated products
- specialised expertise, garnered and refined over time
- a large staff which understands the business and understands the customers
- household brand recognition
To succeed on the Internet, a big company has to take advantage of its uniqueness in these
areas. It can't compete head-to-head with the small players at their own game, at least
not in the short term. It needs other
strategies.
The big company has to reimagine its business. It needs to leverage its assets in a new
way. For example:
- A bank with hundreds of branches in a particular country finds it can no longer compete
with international players on prices and variety of products. It uses its branch network
to resell the financial services that
are available online, while adding a higher level of personal service and dealing with the
legal and technical formalities which are specific to that place.
- A chain of upmarket supermarkets which is facing competition from online sources in the
specialty foods market becomes a channel for the online competitor. Not only do the
supermarkets provide local storage and delivery of the specialised stock, but they also
help with sourcing local produce that would be of interest to an international audience.
As a result, the supermarket can serve customers better by providing a wider range of
products than ever before and it can sell its best goods internationally. The onlne source
gains by having better distribution, which allows it to scale without investing in
expensive fixed assets. It also gains access to a far bigger market than it would have on
the Internet alone.
- A financial services company which transacted a lot of multi-currency business in the
past because of its geographical position uses its expertise to help other financial
services develop similar multi-currency
systems. This cooperation becomes the basis for future partnerships and mergers.
- A former national telephone company which faces competition from many smaller niche
players stops trying to compete with them directly. Instead, it concentrates on providing
the infrastructure to those smaller niche
businesses, including billing systems, call centres, networks, exchanges, ducting and even
customer relationship management systems.
- A national postal company cannot provide as rapid and efficient a service as its
international competitors and has no hope of building a comparable international
infrastructure. Instead, it develops alliances with the best international carriers and
resells them through its network of offices. In the longer term, it works with other
national postal companies to develop an international brand, bound together by an IT
infrastructure which allows packages to be tracked and quality to be managed.
These are the sorts of infrastructures that every developing business will need, but that
only the bigger, existing players have. At the moment, the networks they are mostly
relying on are the Internet, the postal and freight services and the credit card networks.
In time, they will require other types of networks, which only the big incumbents can
provide.
A lot of big companies are worried in the face of the new challengers. They are wondering
how they can compete with these new players. The key is for them to remember the following
elements:
- Think Reach - Who are the customers we have? What do we offer them that is unique? How
can we offer them more?
- Think Knowledge - What do we know that is unique? How else could we use that knowledge?
- Think Infrastructure - What distribution and support mechanisms do we have that no one
else does? Who else can we work with to improve this infrastructure?
- Think Long-Term - Where do we want to be in five or ten years?
Big companies have to make the best use of their core strength. While every company has to
change to meet the new environment, large companies have to be careful not to downsize
away these core assets trying to compete with nimbler players. There's no use trying to
make an elephant run like a cheetah. Big companies have to find a new way of owning their
chunk of the market.
Back to Top
By Dan Powell (specialties@fast.net)
http://www.latinoloveclub.com
Did you know that only 56 percent of Internet users use English as their primary language,
and that percentage is shrinking? (Among non-English users, 17.4% use Japanese; 17.1
percent use Spanish; 16.8% German and 10% French.)
Let this demographic information sink in and you'll see that moving beyond your
native tongue could open new markets for your online business.
Some webmasters tap this market by translating existing sites into one or more additional
languages, while others build bilingual or multi-lingual sites from the ground up.
One way to get a quick idea of whether this trend might affect you is to look at your web
site statistics and sales reports. Do a lot of your hits and/or sales come from outside
the country?
If so, it might be time to think about translating your site into one or more languages.
Our experience and conversations with other internet marketers have convinced us catering
to users in foreign languages is one online marketing strategy that
pays!
Is there a manger on duty??? Whether dining, traveling, or staying at the most proclaimed resort, it makes for a great impression when a manager is visible to the guests. You may laugh - but a name badge still carries a lot of weight when it says "manager". Sure you're busy(hopefully that's why you're involved in the hospitality industry) - but making yourself visible, at these busiest of times in yourestablishment, goes a long way in overall guest satisfaction. When thechef appears from out of the kitchen - it shows his/her concern, butmany believe this is a long lost tradition.
Even though we're reading the newsletter through an online medium, itdoesn't
mean that we turn our backs on the printed word (as sampledabove). Have you got a simple,
and readily available, contact card(maybe 4"x6" index card)
pre-printed with key contact people of yourorganization? This helps in particular with the
marketing of CVBs,Chambers of Commerce and welcome centers, who still receive much walk
uptraffic. The whole idea is to make it easy for your potential andcurrent clientele to
reach you. Grocers are the best with displaying the photos and tag lines
of managers and assistants. Follow their lead. Ifyou don't make yourself available (some
don't want to be singled out ina complaint), then you're in the wrong business.
While on the subject of "displaying information" - another area is the use of printed
newspaper or trade magazine ads that might be associated with
your Sales & Marketing campaigns. Take some time to clip and display your current
advertising and help "tie" in with the current promotions. Find an unused
8"x10" or 11"x14" frame (dust it off), maybe add some matting and
locate it where there is plenty of foot traffic (elevators are a great location too). The
added impressions are basically free!
The Macro View ================= by Chris Small
If you're reading this article chances are excellent that you are
looking at, or participating in the opportunity side of the WWW. The web is still in it's
infancy (OK maybe it's a Toddler by now), and who ever can stake their claim right
now will continue to flourish well into the next millennium. The successful
cyber entrepreneur of today could be the equivalent to the Rockefellers,
Vanderbilts,
Kennedy's, Getty's, Ford's, (etc.) of yesteryear.
Lets step out of the micro view for a moment and consider the macro
view. This Internet revolution has been compared
to the impact that Edisons light bulb or Fords Model T had on the
world. Some have even said that the Internet is bigger
than the invention of TV or radio. From each of these discoveries have
come fantastic opportunities. Complete
Industries have sprung up from them. Mammoth fortunes have been made as
a result of them. But you really can't compare
the Internet to them. These inventions fall far short of the impact
that the Internet (as we know it today) will have on
mankind.
A closer comparison would be that of Gutenburgs printing press or the
Industrial revolution. You could even compare
the computer age and the Internet (as we know it today) to the transformation
of early man from a hunter/gatherer to
a sower/reaper. Face it, we are living in a pivotal point in human history.
We are the privileged few who have the
opportunity to capitalize on the greatest technological revolution that this
world has ever seen.
We can observe that historically these revolutions happened over the course
of decades and in some cases centuries. As
we all know, the Internet revolution is evolving at a dizzying pace. What we see
today can be history next year
or even next week. Five years from now the Internet will be quite different than
most of us can imagine. Where it
eventually leads is probably not even clear to the brightest minds of today.
However, we are seeing the results of this
change in our lifetimes.
Certainly nobody realized that they were in the midst of a dramatic
historical shift when man discovered the flint
and steel, but change they did. We, today have the advantage of all of mans
previous experiences and hopefully are much
better able to predict the consequences of this next transition. We do
understand that it is a significant change, but it may not be apparent how
significant until the historians have interpreted it decades or possibly
centuries from now.
OK, back to our micro view again. What should we do? Wait it out and see what
happens? Not very wise. When combustion
engine farm machinery came along the land owner who didn't have it, couldn't
compete and usually lost everything. He may have owned huge tracts of land but he could no
longer afford to pay workers to farm it whenhis neighbor used a tractor. Likewise many of
todays business's (and their employees) stand to be bowled over by this diital tidal
wave. We need to position ourselves as a surfer who is equipped to ride the
wave. We must embrace, it and like the surfing enthusiast that is always looking for
the 'really
big one', be ready to jump in the water at a moments notice. As they say 'He
who hesitates, waits...'
Whenever major new innovations came along they were generally available only
to the elite and not to the common person.
When Gutenburgs printing presses started up the average Joe on the street had
no access to the end product. When the
first few cars rolled off of Fords assembly lines they were not initially
attainable to the masses (although that was
his dream and mission). But the Internet today is available to more people
than were alive at the time of the first printed book. The Internet today is touching more
people than had lived up to and including the time of Christ. The
Internet today has affected the lives of future generations to come in
a profound way that we will only be able to understand after the fact.
Friend, we have available to us today the power to reach out and influence
more people than have existed throughout all of
mans combined history. Let us not waste this precious opportunity. If you are
reading this, you have the same ability and opportunity as everyone else on this
medium. There are no limitations other than your imagination. What will you do with
it? Will you use it to create an empire for yourself and your future generations (as
many are doing) or will you fail to recognize the potential of a few
strategically placed bits and bytes on the computer screens of millions and
millions of computer users worldwide.
Most people are looking for leaders and innovators. Men and women who aren't
afraid to take chances. People who will follow you if they sense that you are firm
in your convictions and willing to stand up for them. Did you know that Marconi (the
fellow who discovered radio waves) was committed to an insane asylum by his friends
before they took him seriously. Today it is cool to be on the cutting edge of change
and if you are willing to embrace this rapidly evolving technological beast and tame
it to your own purposes... well the world really could be your oyster.
If you are ready to roll up your sleeves and work, you have already jumped
ahead of most people. The challenge is that most people aren't willing to put
in the necessary effort, but then again, that's why it is such a fantastic
opportunity for the enlightened few. Consider Thomas Edison and his light
bulb. He documented 10,000 experiments before success found him. Was his effort
worth it? Without it you wouldn't be reading these words.
Don't wait, the water temperature has never been better, there's still room
for you to make a splash... jump in with both feet, just be prepared to start
paddling. This new medium of communication is no respecter of persons. Age,
sex, color, religion, size, family background, past history, etc.; it makes no
difference to the bits and bytes, they respond as well to you as anybody else. There
is only one rule... "Just do it." What you do today could repay you
a hundred fold tomorrow.
Here's what you need to do to get started:
1) Learn as much as you possibly can. But don't let this slow down your
involvement
2) Create or find a product or service that you can promote wholeheartedly.
3) Jump in. Get yourself a solid Internet presence.
4) Get busy! Market that product.
Sounds rather simple doesn't it. In fact it requires a lot of effort, but the
steps are simple enough and the rewards are
certainly worth it.
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Article by Chris Small
Chris Small is a cyber entrepreneur and host of the very
successful 'World Deal Center'. His main website is http://www.WorldDealCenter.com/
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