Common Branding Mistakes. Not Knowing Your Competition

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In this episode, we’re going to explore another of the most common branding mistakes. Not knowing your competition! This one often triggers the imposter ick’s today we’re going to push through those feelings together.

Ready?

Where Are You On This Scale?

You probably fit somewhere on this scale of reasoning when it comes to thinking about who your competition is:

On this side let’s call this the avoid end side.

Where you say things like “I don’t care about my competition” or “I don’t have any competition”.

To this end of the scale let’s call this obsessed.

Where you say things like “She just changed her font from this to that – what could this mean?” or “There are 10 a penny of people like me. Why has is gotta be so hard!?”

Are You Running the Risk of Not Knowing Your Competition?

Let’s be honest, neither of these ends of the spectrum feels all that appealing. Do they?

By the end of this episode, I’m going to have you thinking about your competition in a motivating way that improves your business and brand to the point where you feel all charged up to take inspired action and get out of a comparisonitis funk.

What Happens When You Ignore Your Competition?

If you continue to ignore what your competition is doing you will probably continue to feel:

• Like Imposters in their market
• Less than in comparison to what everyone else is doing
• Scared about facing up to any flaws they know they are avoiding about themselves as a business

But Also

However much worse than this, it can also:

• Allow you to antiquate yourself. When you avoid how others are adapting to new technology, demands or systems to keep their business up with the times, you’re missing out on using these tactics in your own business. This can make you look like the slow runner in the race. I was always this kid in PE by the way. Running in last, wheezing. Not a good look in a polyester gym skirt. Not a good look for a business.
• Diminish your real value. You could have invertedly positioned yourself at the cheap end of the market. Your prices match the new inexperienced graduate level of the market. If you have more experience, talent and skill in comparison to the top end of the market you’re disrespecting yourself by playing in the bargain basement zone. You should be leading the pack and earning a heck of a lot more profit.
• Make you feel a bit rudderless. That is the worst when it comes to motivating yourself. You can’t say where you’re heading for in the next 3 years’ time if you can’t honestly say where you are right now can you?

Soap Opera?

Create a soap opera of competitor drama in your mind. You could have been comparing yourself to a competitor that belongs in a very different place in your market. This is so common. I have worked with a lot of business owners who have been harbouring intense feelings about another brand that does something similar to what they do. Then when we do the work we learn that this business that has consumed so much energy and resentment is doing something quite different for a different customer. The feeling of letting this go can feel like a huge weight off the shoulders.

What Are The Benefits Of Knowing Your Competition In Your Business?

As well as feeling the bliss of additional knowledge and the benefits of knowing your competitors better it:

Informs your Marketing Planning

Having this framework of what everyone else is up to gives you that much-needed objectivity to rigour test your plans and ideas. In a lot of cases, this can save you enormous amounts of wasted time on projects that copy what everyone else is doing.

Gives you an Objective Look

At the play or theatrical production of your marketplace. When you can see more objectively how everyone else is playing out the personality of their brands in your marketplace you can spot the roles missing. For example, if you are a female coaching business and all the other players in your marketplace play have assumed the role of ultra-girly ex-damsel in distress turned #girlboss it’s easy to see that by dialling up your colour palette from the banal and let’s face it passe pastels and tweaking your narrative to rebellious broad who cuts the BS. Your personality is going to stick out in a big way. That will attract all of the coaching clients who were reluctantly tolerating the saccharine girly branding of what was on offer to them before you because they will feel a kinship to your non-BS ways and approach.

Confidence Boost

As I said, every competitive audit I have ever been involved in has given my clients an incredible confidence boost. This pays off in so many ways especially when you are working on your own or in a very small team. Maybe your competitive audit is going to give you a few good reasons to celebrate just how incredible your business is. Seeing how much better you are might give you that confidence boost to put up your prices or start getting rid of the less-than-ideal clients you have been clinging to for fear that your leads are drying up.