How Do I Compete Against Bigger Companies?

Bigger companies, you ask? This is a fairly simple task. It actually doesn't take a genius to figure it out, either.


To answer this question, you would have to start by asking yourself who you are competing against. If you are competing against a giant competitor (We will use my favorite business, Nuttin But Leather, in this instance) you will need to realize that your business is a lot smaller, and does not have the personnel that a mighty corporation would have.



Nuttin But Leather has 4 employees. The big guys have thousands. How do we go to war with them? What do we have that they don't? What we have is stealth. Stealth is an amazing advantage over big-time companies. How do we have stealth? That's easy, they don't know we exist. We can take them down with simple (relatively small) blows on a regular basis. How do we do this? Well, that's the tricky part.



We know more about our company, the product, and we have the drive to beat a monster. Your best bet as an online company is to firgure out Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. SEO is a the biggest trick up anyone's sleeve. When someone looks for Leather Laptop Briefcases, on a search engine, we want to be the first one you see. Now, you can blow your money on expensive pay-per-click campaigns (pay-per-click, is paying the search engine to put your name first on a series of keywords), or you can do this naturally, let the search engines pick you as thier number one.



Now, I won't explain SEO to you, number one is because I don't have two years to explain it, number two is that I am still learning it myself. Once you have optimized your site, and made it number one, you have brought the Giant to it's knees. You have to remember, they are going to try to come back, making this a daily battle.



Second Part: I own a bar, I'm not competing against giant corporations, I'm competing against the guy down the street. (I'm using my local watering hole as an example here.)



This is my favorite, it's my bread and butter.



What does your business have that is better than his? The thought behind this is simple. You KNOW your business is better than his, right? You need to highlight two things...

1.) Your strengths.

2.) Their weaknesses.

Your strongpoints need to be what makes a customer visit you in the first place. What can you sell your potential customer on? Is it (in this instance) specials (i.e. "ladies night" "dollar longnecks")? Is it a better experience than what would be had than your competitors? This is for you to figure out. Nobody can do that for you, either.

I use my bar, simply because the owner (a personal friend of mine,), asked for my help once. He already knew he had better deals than his competitors, he just didn't know how to exploit them.

My advice? Simply step on their toes. I designed a business card that offered a free drink at his bar. He sent a guy into those bars, as they were running, and handed them out to the customers. His revenue grew by 7% the following day (and it is growing still).

That is a true story, but you have to keep in mind, they can (and most likely will) look for revenge. You need to stay directly on your toes at all times.

Competition is half the fun, the other half is gloating after you beat them...