Marketing Plan | Business Competition

BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES

by NHKC Capital Resources™

Business Competition

Describe your major competitors in terms of the factors that most influence revenues.

This may include their size, the market share they command, their comparative product quality, their growth, available capital and resources, image, marketing strategy, target markets, and any attributes you consider important. Industry associations, industry publications, media coverage, information from the financial community, and their own marketing materials and Web sites may be good resources to identify these factors and "rate" the performance of each competitor.

Your access to this information will vary. Competitors that are publicly traded may have a significant amount of information available. Competitive information may be limited in situations where your competitors are privately held. If possible, you may want to take on the task of playing the role of a potential customer and gain information from that perspective.

Use this topic for a general comparison of your offering as one of several choices a potential buyer can make. There is a separate topic, in the market analysis chapter, for detailed comparison of strengths and weaknesses of your specific competitors.

Discuss how your service offering compares to the others. For example, your travel agency might offer better airline ticketing than others, or perhaps it is located next to a major university and caters to student traffic. Your graphic design business might be mid-range in price, but well known for proficiency in creative technical skills. Your management consulting business is a one-person home office, but enjoys excellent relationships with major personal computer manufacturers who call on you for work in a vertical market in which you specialize.

In other words, in this topic you should discuss:

How you are positioned in the market.

Why do people buy your services instead of the other services offered in the same general categories?

What benefits do you offer? At what price? To whom?

How does your mix compare to others?

Think about specific kinds of benefits, features, and market groups, comparing where you think you can show the difference.

This topic is still in the general area of describing the industry, or type of business. Explain the general nature of competition in this business, and how the customers seem to choose one provider over another. In the restaurant business, for example, competition might depend on reputation and trends in one part of the market, and on location and parking in another.

In many professional service practices, the nature of competition depends on word of mouth because advertising is not completely accepted:

Is there price competition between accountants, doctors, and lawyers?

How do people choose travel agencies or florists for weddings?

Why does someone hire one landscape architect over another?

Why choose Starbucks, a national brand, over the local coffee house?

All of this is the nature of competition:

What factors make the most difference for your business?

What might make customers choose one of your type of business over another? Price, or billing rates? Reputation? Image and visibility?

Are brand names important?

Or is it simply word of mouth, in which the secret is long-term satisfied customers?

You've referred to competition already, in previous topics, in terms of general factors and the nature of competition. Use this topic to list your specific competitors, and the strengths and weaknesses of each.