Everything in business involves competition. No doubt. Even if you discover a micro-niche with no competitors on sight, sooner or latter, people will start noticing you and start copying what you do. What’s worse, copycats seem to be able to do better than you!
That often happen in the online business world: Running a business blog, there’s a chance for someone else copy your content and design. The problem arises when the web pages of your ‘copycat’ appear higher in search engine ranking!
Not only in the online world, that also happens in brick-and-mortar business – i.e. someone working for a restaurant quit and establish his own restaurant, using the secret recipe of the restaurant he worked before; his restaurant is even more popular and successful!
Sure, copyrighting might help, but you must be ready for a lawsuit battle – something that is resource-intensive and often counter-productive. It’s may be the necessary evil, but you need to do other things than securing your assets; you need to be proactive and on the attacking site, rather than focusing your energy in defending your brand, products, and services.
The good news is, there is a way to ace business’ dirty competition: you need to embrace change and be ready to respond to business challenges accordingly.
So, instead of getting annoyed, be anxious and be angry, shouting “this isn’t fair!” there’s a positive side in all of those.
Here are some tips to get you focused on what’s important:
1. Copycats make you continuously develop your business
The best way to respond to copycats is by developing new products and services in such a way that you keep your business innovate and stay ahead of the competition.
2. ‘Strike’ your competitor back by learning what works from them!
Sometimes, copycats can do better than your business for the similar products and services. No worries! What you need to do now is to learn what makes them better than your business, and start to do the same while doing No. 1 above.
3. Keep offering value and promoting brand trust
What separates you from your competitors is your brand reputation. If your brand is trusted and reputable, you have a firm positioning in your market. Your competitors might copied you and make things better, but what they can’t do is to copy the intangible value of your business: Reputation, image, and branding; and yes, most people prefer to do business with someone reputable. This is why reviews and opinions regarding your business is very important.
I conclude…
Working hard and get copies sucks, really. But what can you do? It’s a business battlefield out there, and only the best prevails. All we can do is to do the 3 things above and be competitive, resilient and persistent.
You also need to embrace business competition and understand that competition is inevitable, especially in lucrative, high demand business niches. Get ready to achieve your business success via differentiation and serve your market segment well.
What sayest thou?
Ivan Widjaya
Learning from business competitors
Image: pasukaru76 / Flickr