Business Competition:10 Effective Actions You Should Take Regarding Competitors & Stand Out!

Entrepreneurs can’t avoid Business Competition!

Whether you like it or not, no entrepreneur is shielded from Business Competition. It is part of the game. You open a shop today, a neighbor opens up another one, a bigger one! You start a school, someone else is already operating a bigger one!

You start a restaurant, and another guy will open up another restaurant just across the street, exactly opposite to yours or just in the next room! Even if you discover a new idea, someone will have duplicated it the next day shortly after your launch. Business competition can’t be avoided!

Surprisingly, business experts and entrepreneurship scholars advise us to not fight against business competition, but embrace it! According to Hitesh Bhasin at Marketing1, business competition drives us into innovation, differentiation and specialization, better customer service and quality products, and a lot more.

However, even with these advantages, business competition or competitors aren’t exactly your usual friends. They are, in all business sense, your enemies. They want you to collapse so their businesses soar. They tell clients, hey, don’t go there, come to me. They aren’t your usual friends!

In this short article, I am gonna share with you 10 effective actions you could take against your Business Competition, and shine out better! Let us get started!

10 Actions to Take Against Business Competitors!

1. Find underserved target audience or demographics!

This is clear, right? If a business similar to yours already exists, and is servicing women, turn yours around and make it fit for men. You can as well look into age. If one has a skills-training institute for youth, introduce adult learning.

You can as well dig deeper into locations. One has a business here in Kampala, take a similar business to Entebbe or Jinja. How about unique audience like people with disabilities? How about unique audience in terms of social class: one has ‘Kayola’ for everyone, repeat the same business, but just design it for high class or corporates. Be creative. You can beat business competition and shine out!

2. Improve the Quality of Existing Business

Improving the quality of an existing solution is easy and can be achieved in ‘billions’ of ways to beat business competition. If one was selling juice, but in unhealthy and untidy environment, repeat the same business but just serve the juice in a very clean and organized environment.

Websites? Well, make yours fast and or easy to navigate. Or if your competitor has a website only, own a website and app at the same time. If one is selling Irish potatoes from anywhere, repeat the same business but with irish potatoes from Kisoro or Kabale! Use better materials, improve the seats, serve with a protector, or teach with love!

3. Adjust your pricing

There are hundreds of pharmacies in Kampala, and I love first pharmacy. Why? Low and many options of prices! People don’t get this! Even a reduction by just 1 or 5% can make a big difference as long as you keep the quality the same as your competitors or even better. If a competitor is selling at 5000UGX, just sell at 4700UGX. If a shirt is 50k, sell the same shirt at just 48000.

Using prices to beat business competition shouldn’t be about reductions only, but other creative options! For example, offer discounts, enable or allow for installments, or buying on credit, and or have a unique and low subscription plan for new clients or the returning ones!

4. Release a solution with additional features

This is different from doing better at quality! Quality entails doing best at every stage of your business even when these stages are the same as for your competitor. However, adding features means doing things your business competitor wasn’t doing or offering! Tech businesses understand this better! Additional features usually imply better (though not always)!

So, how about a motorcycle that has inbuilt radio, phone charger, automatic Kickstarter, and more? How about a booking website that enables online payments or even rescheduling and cancelling on top of just booking? How about an education program that doesn’t only give certificate to learners, but connects them to employment opportunities? Think about it! What more can you add on what your competitor is already doing? Add them, and you are the better!

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5. Create a loyalty or rewards program

Most businesses, especially the established ones don’t care about anything! They already have loyalists. But a new business like yours needs followers. So, how about a loyalty program whereby you reward clients for coming back or purchasing more or rewards for referring clients to you? This can kill your competitors in no time! Miklah has one!

Of course, chances are your competitors will do the same. However, if you can wisely incorporate this into other strategies like quality, better prices, and a focused or target audience, you are likely to emerge a winner! Try it!

6. Step up customer service

The assumption is, every business has customer service. But there can be differences. Big companies like MTN or Airtel or even big banks, UMEME, DSTV/GOtv, etc have customer care that is almost static and robotic! No creativity! Any query has a specific reply, and you can at times think you are chatting with robots.

But a small company, your startup, can be real and human-centric with customer care. Make it easy for people to ask questions or send in queries and have personalized responses and corrections in time. Be human, and less or never robotic. I hate robots! Share testimonials, case studies of conflict resolution, and be people-centered.

7. Do something different!

Enough with similar solutions and struggling with business competition almost for everything! How about starting up a new and divergent idea, one that surely has less or no competition? This needs bold entrepreneurs who aren’t afraid of starting ‘weird’ and unique business models.

Look at existing solutions and the directions or foundation they command, and make a twist, go the opposite or unique way! Everyone is buying and selling with money, let’s buy and sell with data! How about SWAPPING or barter trade? It’s how SWAPafrica swept off awards! How about exchanges based on ‘UBUNTU’? Do you remember any unique businesses of our 21st century? Share some!

8. Beat them on organic and social visibility!

Your competitor may be good, bigger, and has been there for years, but an amateur in all things digital marketing. When your business makes it in SEO rankings and social visibility, it means that you will shine out even when you aren’t the best in actual sense!

Actually, most businesses that are socially and organically visible aren’t necessarily the best, the same applies to personalities or public figures. If you can’t beat them in any other way, beat them on SEO and social visibility. Let every Google Search and Social Inquiry land everyone at none but you! Note: Established businesses are understanding this, and beginning to invest a lot in it!

9. Use and benchmark on your experience

Customers love experienced service and product providers. I take myself to be a good business mentor and skills educator simply because I teach that which I do! Is your experience in years? Show it off! Tell them ‘Since 1914’ thing! Showcase the big clients or partners you have worked with, leverage on clients testimonials, share impact and case studies. Every single achievement matters. Show it and display your experience. I do this a lot, even with the few successes I have registered.

10. WORK together with your Business Competitor!

Sometimes, there is no need to fight off the business competition. Just go to them, and convince them to work out something with you! Make partnerships for business. Airtel teams up with Lycamobile, Ford with Toyota, Samsung with LG, Apple with Google.

Yes, sometimes you are better off working with them than just fighting against them. Some partnerships can be strategic so that you first master them before you break them! Be wise! Wait! Can this be wisdom? Partnering with someone only to bring them down or betray their partnership later? No, never! But capitalism is evil in some ways. And this wouldn’t be the worst sin! If you are a capitalist, you are already cruel! I am kidding!

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Hey, those were 10 actions one would consider practicing to beat off Business Competitions, and shine out. Which one is your best? What are you already doing? Who is your competitor? Share anything in the comments section below. Thank you. And if you wanna be a sustainable entrepreneur, we have you covered. Join Sacred Entrepreneurship here.