May 05, 2004 | View Comments (14) | Category: Web Business
Summary: How I research competition when starting a new venture.
Let's pretend Scrivs and some others were going to start a company. One of the first things that any person should do before starting a company is to research the competition. However, what do you do if you can't find the competition? Do you look at other companies that are related to you? Do you really think that no one has thought of the concept you wish to implement? No matter what you do there is always competition.So you know there is some competition out there, but how do you go find it? That is the question I am trying to answer.
The only ones that you think would compete with you are the big name companies. However, you know that when you launch there will be some clones popping up as well so you better make sure that when you do launch you do so with some force.
Someone is reading this post thinking about an idea and will begin to research the competition. So by writing a post on researching competition you could potentially be creating more competition, but you smile a that because competition in any industry is good. It keeps you on your toes and pushes you to be better.
Let's pretend Scrivs was looking for competition. Where would he find it? Looks like the only method is to use the almighty Google.
I find the competition. I research everything the competition does. I take what they do and make it better. I take what I want to do and add it in. I find new angles and ways to approach the problem. Then I pray it all works out.
Before I started this blog I researched the "competition". I knew that to have a successful blog I had to offer something different than everyone else. If you clone, you lose. I found that not too many designers really talk about their own thoughts on how they go about things. A lot of the talk is all the same. A lot of the posts are "hey check out what he posted".
So I researched. I analyzed. I built. Then I prayed. It seemed to work. Same goes with the CSS Vault and Forever Geek. Research, analyze, build, pray. Okay, praying is optional, but it doesn't hurt to do it.
What do you do to research the competition? Do you find it necessary? Questions I like to ask are:
Trackback URL: http://9rules.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/228
The first thing you need to do is define your target audience. All business competitors compete for a broad group of customers. The ones that position themselves better are usually the ones who have defined a more specific target of people that are going to be "their" customer.
After you specify "your" customer, you can examine how your competition is reaching their audience, and borrow/make changes/etc. to fit the needs of your intended target.
jason (http://www.jasonspage.net/)
Maybe you could even reverse it totally, and use the found target audience (from Jason’s post) to find your competition. After all, existing competition is the company or service that your target audience currently uses.
Maybe you could run a survey against your target audience to find out how they view your competition?
Phil Baines (http://www.wubbleyew.com/blog)
Is it necessary? I know you didn't seriously mean to post that in the form of a real question.
Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.
Whole industries are built on:
Competitive Intelligence
Knowledge Management & even
Corporate Espionage
Entire libraries have been written about the idea of understanding your "enemy" so you can beat him - I'm sure you've heard of / read Sun Tzu's little book "The Art of War"?
Anyway, besides obviously watching what the competition is doing, I think it's more important to listen to the what the industry, vendors, customers...are saying about them as well - refer back to "hype" a couple of posts ago.
There are numerous sites, depending on the type of company you're researching where you can find info for free - other than just going to the company site itself.
There are industry directories, vendor or reseller directories, state directories (Texas has one, not sure about Florida or any other state), the sec (for public companies), Hoovers, Yahoo... and countless others which I could list, but one of the big things in CI is to hold some things close to the vest.
One I found which is kind of fun is Business Plan Archive. It's an archive of business plans and other documents of companies that went belly up in the dot com era. Not good for current CI, but a good study of what not to do to succeed in the long run.
Even WebCEO, which I believe, I recall you mentioning you had a copy of is useful.
In most industry, there are substitute products / services, where comparitively(?) similiar items are offered at a less cost or better quality. In other words, for every Ford there is a Chevrolet, for every Shell - a Chevron, for every Pilot pen - a Sanford and so on. It's what our economy is built upon.
In terms of research, why does this post lead me to believe that it's you that doing all the obscure google searches from random keywords found in my posts that I find in my referrer logs?
Mark (http://www.lightpierce.com/ltshdw)
I think that even if this supposed venture is a new service that doesn't have any direct competition, you can always look at aspects of what your hypothetical company offers to see who is providing that service well and how you can make it better.
Such as, every business does communication of some sort. What companies out there are communicating in a similar way that you hope to do (something like marketing, PR) and make it apply to your goals for the company.
I agree Phil. I personally cannot wait any longer than, say, 25 days.
Matthew Oliphant (http://usabilityworks.typepad.com)
If you (in the generic sense) want a lesson and some usable ideas in competitive intelligence, try getting hooked up in a locally important political race.
I've done a couple of these, and it's crazy what these people will do to get the upper hand on their competitor.
Mark (http://www.lightpierce.com/ltshdw)
Yeah Mark, it was amazing how every search on Google brought up your site as the #1 entry :-P
Great advice everyone.
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
Yeh, I guess that'll happen when there's a search for accessability [sic] of binge drinking.
I'd imagine it's not a likely topic for daily water cooler fodder.
Mark (http://www.lightpierce.com/ltshdw)
I am sure you already have a bunch of great resources, but here are some that I have found useful in the past. The Small Business Administration and Tanned Feet both have an enormous amount of templates and detailed information about starting your a business.
Keith (http://phatbuddha.com)
Scrivs, all this "Let's pretend Scrivs and someone is going to start a company" stuff is really begining to bug me now. Come out with it already!! ;)
There's a new link in the footer http://businesslogs.com/ - Now whats this all about ?
Matthew (http://blog.matthewroach.co.uk)
Just a company who wanted to partner up with me and help them out with some things. I am sure I will be able to pass out some information when it is time, till then its up to them to release the info. Right now I am mainly helping build their Google PR. I think you might be interested in what they are going to do though.
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
I have been there. With a couple of friends, we have started a company producing a physical product that nobody else is specialising in. When we made our debut at a trade show, there were no end of people kicking themselves for not having done it. We have searched the World over and not found another company to do battle with. Although there are many that could easily do the same, they have staked their claims in another part of this industry. What we need to watch out for is those who see what we are doing and try to take our slice of the cake.
My question is this: Where does one find investors willing to take a gamble on a great idea who don't want a controlling interest?
I am happy and content dealing with computers and remember when I used to moan about the price of memory and drives etc. for upgrades. Now I realise how lucky I've been, the price of machine tools is scary!
Adrian Rinehart-Balfe (http://www.boogenstein.com/)
Keep track of comments to all entries with the Comments Feed
©2003-06 9rules, Inc. | Thoughts Feed | Notes Feed
Amazon Stores: Powertools | Jewelry | Books | Health | Landscaping | Kitchen | Movies
#1
Scrivs, all this "Let's pretend Scrivs and someone is going to start a company" stuff is really begining to bug me now. Come out with it already!! ;)
Good post. Not sure how I am going to use it though.
Phil Baines (http://www.wubbleyew.com/blog)