Have you ever thought about how your competitors can help YOU?
Probably not. Most people are afraid of competition and would love for it to just go away.
Well your competitors aren't going away any time soon. But that's a good thing because your competition can be a real source of leverage for you.
Here's what I mean.
Think about your best competitors. What do they have that could benefit you?
They have traffic, top search engine rankings, a large email list, lots of sales and most likely they dominate social marketing.
Why compete with that?
I say use those things to your advantage.
Hot, competitive niches are booming with opportunity — for YOU!
So how do you use those things to gain the competitive edge and boost your business?
Here are 5 strategies to leverage the power of your competition. Instead of breaking your back competing against your competition, use them to expand your reach, improve your rankings, build a following and expose your brand.
1. The Search Engine Pounce
Your competitors that have top search engine ranking are reaching your target audience. It might take you a long time to reach that kind of top ranking but you can certainly benefit from their rankings by being featured on their page.
Start by looking at the top 10-20 search engine results for your best keyword phrase. Look at each of the pages that come up carefully. Examine who those pages link to. For example, do they link out to reviews, testimonials, tips, or other resources.
Now think about what content you could contribute that could be included on that page. Contact the site owner and sell them on the benefit of using your recommended content.
Look also for listings that have articles, blog posts and forum posts that you can easily contribute to. If you answer a forum question or contribute useful information on a blog comment you'll now be featured on that page with a link to your site or profile.
2. The Guest Blogging Flogging
You're probably busy every week figuring out our next blog post and writing the best post you can.
That's a great strategy but along with that weekly planning try to slip in an extra post or two that you can submit as a guest post.
Start by finding popular blogs in your niche and get to know the blog owners personally. Sign up for their newsletter, follow them on social media and comment on their blog posts. Help them get to know you. While they may be a competitor of yours you can easily swoop in with the one thing all bloggers need and that's fresh content.
Make an offer to guest post with a topic that you know would fit their blog and their audience would appreciate.
Guest blogging is an ideal way to expand your reach and increase traffic to your site.
3. Social Media Attack
If your competitors are smart they are well immersed in social media. And that's a good thing. They've done all the work for you.
Find your competitors on your favorite social media sites and join their networks, join their groups and get involved in conversations.
Friend them, like them and comment on their content. This will give you exposure to them and their networks.
And here's why this is so important. It has the potential to open doors for future opportunities like joint ventures, newsletter features, guest posting and all kinds of exciting opportunities.
4. List Swapping Blast
All great competitors have email lists and chances are they are large, healthy lists. Once again use this to your advantage.
Find publishers and bloggers in your niche with large mailing lists and subscribe to these lists yourself. Find out what kinds of content they publish and what their email subscribers like.
Get creative and offer them something they would appreciate for their newsletter. Perhaps a product review for a product or service they promote, a case study or maybe an interview.
The benefit for you is that many email services offer an RSS feature which means their emails are also online. This gives you a direct inbound like to your blog or web site.
5. The Joint Venture Adventure
Your direct competitors aren't the only people you can benefit from. Think about the people who market to your audience indirectly.
For instance, if you sell baby clothes you could assume that diaper services are in front of your target market as well. Or if you sell domain names you know that web hosting services are also in front of your target market.
Now you need to think about what related products and services your ideal customer buys and who are they buying from.
When you figure that out contact them directly and tell them you are willing to offer their visitors a special offer or an exclusive coupon code on your product. They will most often accept your offer as it's on a non-competing product and of course who doesn't love offering their visitors something special?
You've helped them and they've helped you.
Work together, NOT Against Each Other
I believe that there's enough business to go around for everyone so why not work together to help each other.
Not every competitor will be receptive to your offers of working together but that's OK, find others that will. It's certainly more profitable than fighting each other for market share.
I scratch your back you scratch mine.
Who would argue with that logic when it brings you both more market exposure and market share?
Have you worked with your competitors lately? What experiences have you had?
Recommended Reading:
- The Guest Blogging Survival Guide
by Kristi Hines
- Email Marketing Blueprint – The Ultimate Guide to Building an Email List Asset
by Steve Scott
- Ten Things Every Successful Entrepreneur Knows that the Rest of the World Doesn't
by Nikki Purvy
Hi Elizabeth,
Yes – I’ve collaborated with many direct competitors of mine lately and the results have been outstanding.
The first, I submitted a well crafted guest post which was well received. The second, I’m active on his FB fanpage and it didn’t take long before his followers started befriending me. Finally (a point you missed out), I actively comment on the blogs of all the other (many competitors) of mine.
Now, who resists such goodwill especially a well written guest post or a carefully thought out comment?
Elizabeth, your points can only come from a genius!
Be certain to make the day great!
Always,
Terungwa
Hey Terungwa,
I’m so glad you use your competitors to your advantage. Not many folks do and there’s so much potential there. And of course, commenting on competing blogs is also a great idea. Thanks for picking that up 🙂
Have a wonderful rest of the day Terungwa!
Blessings,
Liz
Definitely working with the competition can be better for SEO in general, and it creates more visibility for the startup who is not yet highly ranked. It takes a lot of time, but it’s worth it. Thanks for the great post!
Hey Elizabeth,
You wrote a very nice article.
Specially the 5 strategies are just awesome.
We can follow these steps for any business, I think.
Thanks for sharing this valuable post 🙂
Keep writing.
Hey John,
It does take time but anything worthwhile does, wouldn’t you agree 🙂 But I like the visibility part. We all need to do whatever it takes to be more visible and even using our competition is a good way. After all our best competitors have done all the work already so why not take advantage of that.
Blessings,
Liz
Hi Tuhin,
I agree, these are things we could follow in most businesses, however some businesses are a bit tougher than others.
These strategies actually work better online. For example, my daughter has a photography business and offline photography is very competitive, they don’t allow much interaction with competitors.
That’s really too bad I think because helping each other can be so rewarding for you individually, but apparently in the world of photography, especially wedding photography they want no part of their competition, it’s pretty cut throat 🙁
Thanks for stopping by Tuhin.
Liz
Hi,
Interesting post. Most of the times we are only looking to beat our competitors in their own game without realizing how we can benefit with them. I think I will like to ask is can you suggest any tool or software that w can use to track our competitors back links? I have used Ahrefs before but that is too expensive to use on regular basis. A part from it do you think there is any other tool I can try to look in?
Hi Elizabeth,
I am 100% sold on working creatively, not competitively. I’ve noted my most successful eBook launches were grounded on getting reviews from people in my niche, and authority reviews at that. I offered up a free copy of the eBook and some reviewers even wrote reviews on their blogs, which helped boost my sales immensely. I am a huge fan of working on a creative, not a competitive, plane of thought because it helped me blog from paradise.
I wouldn’t be typing these words from Bali unless I worked with leaders.
I dig your approach and can’t get for the life of me why you’d make your blogging job tougher by going against people in a world of abundance. There’s more than enough of everything to go around so simply be generous, help others, prosper others, and you’ll flat out see the best results by teaming up with pros instead of going against them.
As for the search engine trick, that’s how I found this blog. I mean of course I know Ileane but after searching for “blogging tips” this blog popped up on Page 3 of Google. I saw the name, and had to visit. Now I’ll study the posts here, to check for linking and other strategies, and I’ll likely link into this post in the future because it’s such a smart, effective study into why being competitive is the silly way to go.
Create with others, don’t compete against them, and you’ll understand the true power of leveraging.
Thanks Liz,
Ryan
Thanks a lot Elizabeth for such a wonderful post. You have given some best points here. One must not run away from competitors, instead competition provides us opportunity to know our weaknesses.
Hi Navneet,
I haven’t used Ahrefs but these are a few of the more popular backlink checkers. I use backlinkwatch the most:
http://www.backlinkwatch.com/
https://monitorbacklinks.com/seo-tools/free-backlink-checker
http://www.analyzebacklinks.com/
https://majestic.com/
https://moz.com/researchtools/ose/
Blessings,
Liz
This is some of the best article i have come across it inspired me to do lot better
Thank you for this Article 🙂
Glad to hear that Khasrang,
If I can inspire you to do better then I’ve done my job. Best of success with your writing 🙂
Blessings,
Liz
Hey Ryan,
Nice to see you here at Ileane’s blog!
Business people sometimes have a mindset when it comes to competition that it’s a bad thing. As I mentioned above, my daughter has a wedding photography business and the competition in that business is super fierce. The internet has helped dispel some of that mindset showing us that we are much better off working creatively with our competitors showing us that we can truly benefit by helping one another. And after all isn’t that how it should be?
Anyway, I could go on all day about that but suffice it to say, it’s a good model to follow.
Thanks Ryan for your awesome insight and for sharing with us here today 🙂
Blessings,
Liz
Yes Tarun, that’s a great way of stating it.
The internet platform gives us the advantage of not only learning from our competitors but joint venturing as well.
Thanks for stopping by and sharing. 🙂
Blessings,
Liz
Hi Elizabeth,
Wonderful article for start ups ! Nicely written , this will surely help those who are new to business and these competitive strategies should keep in mind.
Thanks for sharing your valuable time !
Regards,
Rahul Chalana
Hi Elizabeth, first of all what an uplifting post. I’m going to be honest, I never really understood the competition in blogging thing. I’ve never looked at another blog in the same niche as mine and thought I’ve got to compete with that blog.
I completely agree that we can all learn something valuable from other great bloggers, and benefits from what some of these blogs have to offer, traffic, a thriving community etc.
For me what stands out point in your post is taking advantage of competitors strong social media presence. I follow a handful of other bloggers who I look up to, and I love contributing to the comments and liking the content they share on Facebook and Google+, doing this has helped me to build my own strong social media presence.
Thanks again and have a super week – Fabz
Hi Fabz,
It’s funny how folks don’t readily think of how their competitors can help THEM. I’m talking about ‘direct’ full blown competitors. We generally think of our competitors as ones who can hurt us when in fact they can actually help expand our reach. And the way the internet works it can actually benefit both parties.
Thank you Fabz for your feedback here at Ileane’s blog and have a wonderful rest of the week.
Blessings,
Liz
Hey Fabz,
In this post I mentioned competition with blogging but actually these principles of using your competitors could apply to any online business. Even with full blown ‘direct’ competitors. If you sell a widget online and you have a competitor that sells the same widget, why not connect and help each other? Most people would never consider doing that. It’s not necessarily taking business from each other as it is helping expand each other’s reach.
Thanks for stopping by Ileane’s blog Fabz and have a wonderful rest of the week.
Blessings,
Liz
Hey Liz, when my friend sent me this link and when i read the title, i thought you were gonna share the same strategies everyone talks about regarding competition. (“using competition as motivation to do better”, “knowing where your competition is not doing good so you can fill the consumers holes up by doing what theyre not”. etc) this is a very unique point. thank you so much for sharing all your thoughts. have a nice day!
Why thank you John 🙂
I’m glad you found unique benefit from this but most of all I hope it helps you benefit from more traffic and certainly more sales if that’s your goal.
Blessings,
Liz
According to great Napoleon Hill; every obstacles brings along with it the seeds of an equivalent opportunity.
Many online marketers used to perceive their competitors as an obstacles towards gaining the larger shares of the market, but like you’ve rightly outlined in this post, Elizabeth, instead fighting it, why not look out for the opportunity it brings along with it.
Thanks or sharing Elizabeth.
You’re so right Shamsudeen, there’s opportunity in leveraging the power of your competitors. We can learn a lot from Napoleon Hill. Loved his work by the way.
Thank you so much for dropping by and for your awesome feedback.
Blessings,
Liz
I find that leaving comments on my competitors blogs are also a useful tactic.
I agree Dewald, but only if your comments spark interest, ideas, or interaction.
The idea behind commenting is to get others to sit up and take notice of you. Many commenters comment for the backlink, however links received from comments, side bars and footers are not as valuable as being linked to in valued content.
So the moral of the story is to use comments to provide ideas and insight which is what brings recognition.
Thanks so much for stopping by Dewald.
Liz
You are so right about most businesses being scared of their competitors. What often happens is that they just imitate them.
I’ve spent a huge amount of time studying what our competitors are doing. There are things we can copy but most of the time the best thing to do is to find something they don’t do or that you do better.
Then you can partner up with them or just build a marketing message that appeals to people who didn’t find a fit in your competitor’s product.
For example, we sell a live chat software but we added video and audio to the traditional text chat. Many of our competitors still focus on text. They are an advantage because they are cheaper, work better on mobile… but we offer a new way to connect with customers that they can’t offer. I believe fearing competitors won’t take you anywhere, getting active in their own communities can teach you a lot.
Thanks for the great article 🙂
Thanks for that article, i will certainly use those strategies. But i have a question, what part do you think is more important? Thanks again. 🙂
Love these list. I need to start working in my social media, especially building a Facebook page for my website, since all my competitors seem to have one. And i guess it really does help in Google rankings.
It does help James to have a FB page and get involved with social media. Especially since it’s so much more difficult to be seen through search engine optimization. Social media is also a better way to get targeted traffic which is also better for sales. The down side to social media is the time factor. It’s a time consuming effort that needs to be done every day. That’s a challenge for most of us. The secret is to do what works for you then structure your time effectively to get it done each day.
Thanks for stopping by James.
Blessings,
Liz