Very few markets boast a single company that dominated nearly every aspect of it. You’ll find competition just about anywhere you go, and if you want to survive in that particular market, you’ll have to make sure people shop at your store over theirs.
But how exactly do you go about doing that? There are a variety of different paths you can take to make sure you stay competitive, and always stay on top.
The first is by keeping a careful eye on what everyone else is going. You need to match them advertisement for advertisement. You’re commercial printing orders need to be just as large as there are if you want to make sure they don’t take over the market.
This goes beyond just the number of advertisements being printed to the quality and type as well. You have to be sure that if you stand your advertisements up next to the competition you stand as equals, or yours are superior. It doesn’t matter if you’re using brochures, postcards, or whatever other type of advertising works best in your market, be sure yours are always just as effective.
Going further into the issue, you need to know why people should choose your store over the other. This is going to be your strongest selling point and you need to be sure that everything you do stays focused around this point.
When it comes to the strengths and weaknesses of a company there are two primary paths you can take: boosting up your own strengths or pointing out your competition’s weakness.
I remember back in the mid-nineties when Little Caesars was becoming particularly popular in my area. Pizza Hut, which was the primary competition, did two things with their marketing in order to best the competition. The first was that Little Caesars didn’t deliver, which Pizza Hut did. Rather than just promote the fact that they delivered, they made sure that most of their advertising was focused on the fact that Little Caesars didn’t deliver as well.
By getting large commercial printing orders done focused on the weakness of the competition, Pizza Hut managed to slow the popularity that Little Caesars had gained, and retain their position in the market.
Will this always work? That’s debatable, and you might risk coming across as being bully if you aren’t careful. You’ll have to study your market and see what people are looking for, and whether or not such a direct line of attack will work, or if it will end up turning more people against you.
The main point I’m trying to get to is that no matter what you need to be aware of the competition, and never pretend as if they don’t exist. Even if you aren’t directly mentioning them in your advertising, be sure you’re keeping a careful eye on them, and never letting them pull ahead of you when your eyes are elsewhere.
