{"id":276284,"date":"2015-07-30T09:14:14","date_gmt":"2015-07-29T23:14:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/content.easyweddings.com\/au\/pro-education\/ways-can-improve-business-watching-competition-business\/"},"modified":"2015-07-30T09:14:14","modified_gmt":"2015-07-29T23:14:14","slug":"ways-can-improve-business-watching-competition-business","status":"publish","type":"au-pro-education","link":"https:\/\/www.easyweddings.com.au\/pro-education\/ways-can-improve-business-watching-competition-business\/","title":{"rendered":"Seven ways to improve your business by watching your competition"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"watching<\/a><\/p>\n

Writer\u00a0Charles Caleb Colton once famously said, “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”, which is as true of bridal trends as it is in business.\u00a0Although\u00a0copyright laws exist to prevent businesses\u00a0from simply stealing intellectual property and ideas, there are plenty of perfectly legal ways to draw\u00a0inspiration and learn from the successes and failures of competitors… Saving you time, money, and the frustration\u00a0of trial and error:<\/p>\n

1. Subscribe to competitors’ newsletters<\/h2>\n

Sign up to competitors’\u00a0newsletters and take note of how often they’re sending, the tone of their communications and how they’re engaging their audience; are they running giveaways, offering free trials, holding exclusive member-only events, or making case studies out of successful clients? You can also create an RSS feed (Really Simple Syndication) using a feed reader<\/a> that will\u00a0aggregate information from any RSS enabled\u00a0website and send it direct to your inbox. This means each time competitors\u00a0update their website or blog, you’ll receive\u00a0a notification, saving you from visiting all your competitors’ individual websites\u00a0to keep updated.<\/p>\n

2. Rival – then exceed – competitors’ customer support<\/h2>\n

As online business information bureau Red Flag Alert says, telling customers to leave a message or write an email and you’ll return their call within 24 hours is no longer enough for today’s instant gratification-seeking consumers who want answers, like, yesterday. If your major competitor commits\u00a0to responding to enquiries within 24 hours, promise to do it 12,\u00a0or take it a step further and offer real-time support with a live chat<\/a> feature on your website.<\/p>\n

\"how<\/a><\/p>\n

3. Test competitors’ concepts<\/h2>\n

UX Research and Design Blog\u00a0UserTesting<\/a>\u00a0encourages businesses to review their competitors’ concepts before\u00a0investing in similar ideas: “If your competitor comes out with a new product, feature, or app, test their concept before you try to compete. No design is perfect when it gets launched, and their new concept is going to have issues”. Download the app, take advantage of free trial periods or buy the product and review it’s functionality, features and benefits before paying to create or order your own. Establish what they’ve done well and replicate it, then\u00a0improve on what they’ve done poorly. Likewise with social media; if they’ve run an Instagram giveaway around a particular product and\u00a0not a single person\u00a0enters,\u00a0you’ll know\u00a0this concept\u00a0is likely a flop.<\/p>\n

4. Read competitors’ reviews<\/h2>\n

Trawling through competitors’ product and service reviews on their websites, as well as other wedding vendor websites,\u00a0Easy Weddings’ Discussions<\/a>,\u00a0and across social media will reveal what makes your competitors’ customers happy, and what you could<\/em> offer that would<\/em> make them happy, which\u00a0competitors currently aren’t. Do customers\u00a0want plus-size weddings dresses<\/a>, vegan cakes, or non-floral bouquets? If there’s a gap in the market that competitors aren’t filling, you’ve got yourself an opportunity, so productise customer reviews and you might just entice some frustrated brides over to your brand.<\/p>\n

5. Setup Google Alerts<\/h2>\n

Setting up an RSS feed is great for spying on competitors you know and follow, but what about discovering\u00a0up and coming\u00a0businesses, or monitoring\u00a0key influencers? Creating a Google Alert<\/a> is perfect for finding\u00a0new kids on the block\u00a0and keeping\u00a0your finger on the pulse of\u00a0all things relative to your industry, niche and customers. Simply type in your keywords or phrase<\/a>, customise your settings and watch the blog posts, videos, news and discussions come flooding into your Gmail inbox\u00a0– similar to\u00a0an RSS feed. Want to know if people are talking about your<\/em> business? Create a Google Alert for your exact business name and find out where\u00a0it’s popping up on the World Wide Web.<\/p>\n

\"spying<\/a><\/p>\n\n

6. Leverage social media<\/h2>\n

Creating private Twitter lists<\/a>\u00a0allows you to keep an eye on all your competitors’ Tweets in one single feed (without them knowing), so by secretly adding your top 10 competitors – or even non-competitive\u00a0multinational\u00a0brands that you admire – you\u00a0can monitor their giveaway strategy, general language and tone, product releases and even public conversations they’re having with customers. Facebook is also a great tool for learning how to\u00a0successfully – or unsuccessfully – respond to negative feedback in a public forum. As kissmetrics<\/a> points out, conversations on Facebook are neatly displayed\u00a0in a\u00a0single update stream (unlike Twitter), making it easy to follow competitors’\u00a0criticism and response from complaint to resolution.<\/p>\n

\"Twitter<\/a><\/p>\n

7. Investigate\u00a0backlinks<\/h2>\n

Social relationship platform Hootsuite<\/a> suggests keeping an eye on competitors using backlink monitoring. A backlink occurs when a\u00a0blog or website links to content on another site, directly affecting both sites’ search engine ranking. The more backlinks there are on other people’s sites pointing back to yours, the more popular Google deems your website to be, and\u00a0the higher it ranks in search results. By monitoring your competitors’ backlinks using\u00a0online tools and gadgets<\/a>, you can keep abreast of who’s talking about your competitors, what they’re saying, and what\u00a0cross promotional opportunities<\/a>\u00a0might be ripe for pursuing.\u00a0While it’s important to note that some\u00a0backlinks\u00a0are a\u00a0result of existing partnerships, some bloggers may not have included you in their Top 10 Wedding Photo Booth Suppliers <\/em>simply because they didn’t know you existed! Let them know you’d love to be considered for their list (in amongst your competitors), and offer to return the favour by including them in a blog post on your own website to build your backlink network.<\/p>\n

Embracing competition<\/h2>\n

As counterintuitive as it sounds,\u00a0competition in business can actually be a good thing, and without it,\u00a0industries get comfortable\u00a0in the mediocrity of the status quo.\u00a0Competition leads to innovation<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0it forces businesses\u00a0to focus on\u00a0(and better cater for)\u00a0their\u00a0immediate target market… a far more economical approach than trying to market to every bride with a pulse!<\/p>\n

However\u00a0you keep an eye on competitors, whether it’s\u00a0mystery shopping stores or\u00a0anonymous\u00a0help line chats, try\u00a0incorporating some of the digital tools above to create a\u00a0comprehensive competitor watch strategy and strive to not only (ethically) imitate, but also innovate to ensure your business remains\u00a0relevant and unique in today’s thriving\u00a0wedding industry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":268976,"template":"","au_pro_edu_tags":[],"class_list":["post-276284","au-pro-education","type-au-pro-education","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","au_pro_edu_categories-marketing-tips"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.easyweddings.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/au-pro-education\/276284"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.easyweddings.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/au-pro-education"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.easyweddings.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/au-pro-education"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.easyweddings.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.easyweddings.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.easyweddings.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"au_pro_edu_tags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.easyweddings.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/au_pro_edu_tags?post=276284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}