Thread: Stop and move on or take on the competition?

finding competition is good. i would be scared if there was no competition because it means there is no market ( advice from gurus I've heard) . Your goal is to see what they do and do it better in some way, whether its price, service, quality, efficiency, etc. good luck

Did Facebook back away and fold when MySpace existed? Did Apple from Microsoft? Google from Yahoo?

Competition is a sign of a healthy market, I truly believe if you focus on what you can bring to the table and your gameplan the big player(s) have no choice and will have to make room for you

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The fact that you didn't know the company existed poses an opportunity to be FOUND by more customers who are looking for their product/service via better marketing. If their profit is 8M Euro with poor internet marketing, why can't you come in a do a better job?

Dude you're in a good place right now. Capitalize on it.

If you can bring something to the table that they can't, then you will dominate the market while they either:

1. scramble to copy your methods or
2. be stubborn and continue to focus on what they "think" the customers want.

here's some examples, IMO, why newcomers tookover in their respected market.

myspace: easy to spam/hack/diffcult to manage/gave people too many choices. Messy set-up.

facebook: easy to use interface, less spam, simple, tracked people's habits and took information which they used in effective advertising.

Yahoo: Always gave you one sided searches first, e.g. Search "Herpes" at target.com today! Did little to actually search a topic. More focused on delivering customers to businesses than actually being a search engine. Yahoo is, to this day, still the same. The yahoo homepage looks like a hot mess.

Google: Simple as fuck. Better search engine as well as developed tools to help analyze the web. Google is more than a search engine, they are a vision. Google is always improving and getting better at improving. Also, Youtube.

Apple: first home computer, expensive as hell (when I was a kid), bulky, had to conform to apple's programming and usage. Pretty restrictive.

Mircosoft: Improved and maybe stole the blueprint but made the interface more user friendly. More open ended than apple, allowing for more change and tweeking to the customer's needs.

Apple (ipod generation): Simplicity and competition gave apple the hunger to beat the living snot out of the Zune.

Anyways, In short, listen to your customer's needs and excel in an area that your competition is lacking. Being number one is something isn't always a good thing cause alot of times people at the top become complacent and lose sight of what got them there. Tom from myspace is probably kicking himself now that mark Zuckerburg is the 9th most powerful person in the world and he had little money to start as well. An idea is something that is worth more than money. An Idea can't be outsourced although it can be copied, but if you're on a roll and everyone is trying to copy you then you'll always be a step ahead. Focus on the Idea first, the money to fund the idea comes later.

It is never too late.

Originally Posted by Giles

It is never too late.

I agree. Whats good about being late is you learn from the mistakes from the people before you.

Crazy thread... Do it.. If you are worried about one other guy that was hard to find.. You have a tough road ahead of you.

Originally Posted by Giles

It is never too late.

Ha my version:

I have been struggling with this over on this thread...

David vs. Goliath?

I wanted to know what if your exactly the same. Their is nothing different about you at all.

Allot of MJ's examples were things that got better. Google was better then Altavista. RIO MP3 players sucked and weren't hard to beat. I mean tangibly better, the product, the thing you could touch, use, etc.

In my thread I looked at the cell phone industry. 5-6 years ago every carrier had their own branded phone, and the lines were blurry who had the better phone. Today, their is only one phone... iPhone. Now what? Everyone is exactly the same. Some of the feel good things are hard to market, if you genuinely offer great service customers will tell their friends which is awesome. But marketing "Great Service" that's tough, most don't believe it anymore because we have been lied to so many times about "Great Service" what is great service anymore.

So does it come down to price? A constant cold war to the bottom. Free iPhone's for everyone!

Originally Posted by TadMoore

I wanted to know what if your exactly the same. Their is nothing different about you at all.

So does it come down to price? A constant cold war to the bottom. Free iPhone's for everyone!

There are at least 150,000 plumbing companies in the U.S. Mostly they are exactly the same, and do the same thing. Do you really think that by becoming the 150,001 company that you will lose money?

Isn't yours 1-1 so 2? humm.

And no it does not come down to price. If it was then you would be seeing free iphones for everyone now.

DO IT!

Better, faster, and easily accessible - MUCH more than the competition!!

I'm assuming you've made the next step by now, since your question was asked at 6am yesterday? I totally agree with doing the "same thing" as the competition, but market the business. Sounds like they have a business with no marketing. Who knows if they're even still in business then.

Originally Posted by theBiz

Jack i think you said at one point you did pest control, im sure there were many more contractors in your area than companies doing pest control, so you can set the price and/or not have the competition underbid you so much as you would see in a saturated market...do you agree?

I owned a pest control company for less than a year, grew it to 3 trucks doing 10-15 houses a day, no matter what I did though I lost $100 bucks a day.

Personally, I never talked to one customer, and never went to a job. I just thought it would be something interesting to do.

Had I taken the time to see how the biz really worked, I could of turned it into a million dollar business.. and there were at that time at least 150 pest control companies in town as my competitors.

The market never gets too saturated.