One of the key steps that you must complete when you are starting a new business is researching your competitors. It’s important to understand the key rivals who will be vying for the same customers or clients as you.
While there will be approximately ten companies that are in direct competition with your business, there will be hundreds of others that will have the potential to take interest away from your company.
By researching your competition, you will gain an understanding of the different companies including where they are failing as well as their strengths.
As well as researching your competitors at the beginning of your business’s life on the market, you should also be keeping up with their progress regularly through the fiscal year.
Why Your Business Struggling To Keep Up With Competitors
You might find that they are overtaking you in key metrics including the percent of the market audience that they hold. If that’s the case, then you need to ask yourself why are you struggling to keep up with these other companies on the market and what can you do about it.
Let’s explore some of the issues that could be plaguing your business model right now.
Low Efficiency Of Your Business Team
First, it’s important to consider whether your business is falling behind due to the low efficiency and productivity levels of your team. Shortcomings here will mean that your overall output is significantly reduced and your business will be operating at a slower speed in general.
This could even lead to negative reviews for your company, causing you to lose customers to your main competitors. We’ll talk about the issue of negative reviews further down. For now, let’s consider how to boost the efficiency of your business team.
If you want your employees to work harder as well as faster, you should consider rewarding them. By rewarding your customers, you can make sure that they feel connected to your business overall. They will have a stronger compulsion to put their best foot forward and go the extra mile.
There are as many as 19 ways to improve work performance in your employees. Another option would be to ensure that you are limiting distractions.
High amounts of distractions will always slow your team down considerably resulting in a slower and lower output overall. One of the ways that you can do this is by taking more control over sites that are accessible in your office.
Poor Marketing & SEO
It’s possible that the reason your business is falling behind the competition is due to poor levels of marketing and not optimizing your website for search engines (SEO). Your marketing can fall short in a number of ways.
For instance, you might have chosen the wrong marketing agency to represent your business. The problem that you need to watch out for in choosing a company that offers a cookie-cutter service or solution.
A business like this will mean that your company will fall short because they won’t understand what you need or what your goals are. The telltale sign will be if they can quote a price before they know anything about your company.
One of the main factors to think about when working to improve your marketing strategy will be your business website. The right business website can be a major selling point in terms of attracting the right people to your business. However, if your website falls short it can also be a tremendous weakness for your business.
That’s why you should think about the issues that are going to turn customers off or cause them to click away. A vital element to consider here is speed.
If your website is slow to respond, then customers are always going to get bored. Essentially, you’ll have a high bounce rate because they’ll be heading to websites that don’t keep them waiting.
Content is another critical detail here. The right amount of content created to the right standard of quality will give customers a reason to keep returning to your website. This could result in the very important repeat sale your business needs.
Lack Of Innovation
Next, let’s think about innovation. If you want your business to see high levels of success on the market, then you need to make sure that you keep moving forward.
Customers always want to buy from businesses that are staying ahead of the curve. So, how can you make sure that your business is perceived as an innovator?
As a starting point, you need to make sure that you are investing the right amount of money into research. You should also hire the right people in your business.
If you want to ensure that your company remains ahead of the competition, you shouldn’t be afraid to bring in new people.
Sometimes, all your business needs to move forward is someone with a different perspective than your own. One person can be the magic spark that gives your company a new surge of energy.
Bad Buzz
You should also think about the issue of bad buzz for your business when you are trying to gain the upper hand against competitors. If there’s a bad buzz surrounding your business and your brand, customers will have every reason to buy from another company instead.
Don’t forget that 80% of customers will check for bad reviews before they commit to the purchase of a product or service online. They are also very aware of how powerful social media can be as a tool to send brands a message.
So, how can you handle this issue? Well, we recommend that you think about hiring a brand management service. They will explore whether there are any fires spreading across your brand online and work to put them out as quickly as possible.
As well as hiring a brand manager, you should also understand what can cause a bad buzz around your company. More often than not, this is going to be due to the quality of service you provide.
A low-quality solution will always be damaging to your business and may be enough for customers to want to punish your brand.
No USP
Next, you should consider your business’s USP or unique selling point. This is one of the ways that you can ensure your business stands out from the rest online and on the market as a whole. Your unique selling proposition can be anything, so, how should you decide what yours should be?
One of the ways that you can do this is again by researching your competitors. With the right research, you can make sure that you understand their weaknesses and essentially fill in the gaps here.
Don’t forget, once you do decide on your USP, it should have the main presence on your website and through your content. You need to make sure that you are using it to your advantage and explaining to your customers why it should matter to them.
Ideally, you should use a USP to solve a pain point that customers are facing when they search the market for the right product or service that they need. You can work with a marketing agency to find the right USP for your business and ensure that it helps your company stand out.
The Wrong Budget
Finally, you should think about the budget of your business. It’s vital that you spend your money in the right areas while saving funds where possible.
By saving money, you can guarantee that your business model is more efficient and it will be easier to sustain profitability. There are lots of mistakes that you can make with your budget.
The most obvious would be not bothering to set one. Believe it or not, some new business owners do operate without a fixed budget and then wonder why they slip into the red.
There are even business models that require you to start at a loss before building to profit. While this does have its advantages – charging low prices gets attention – the level of risk you’ll incur is dangerous for levels of longevity.
The easiest way to set and stick to the right budget will be to make sure that you use a cloud accounting service. With the right cloud solution, you can manage your spending in real time. This means that you can easily identify the greatest costs in your business model and potentially make the right reductions.
Cloud accounting is also useful at critical points throughout the year. For instance, you’ll have an accurate set of records that you can use for your tax report.
We hope this helps you understand some of the key reasons that you might be struggling to keep your footing on the market and reach the same level as your rivals.
By correcting these issues, you should be able to strengthen the position of your business and avoid a situation where you will slowly be edged out of the market.
Don’t forget, for a company to survive it needs to achieve consistent levels of growth each year. That’s only going to be possible if you’re not overshadowed by some of your main rivals.