Did you know that by legally spying on your competition you can find some new and potentially ground breaking marketing ideas for your own business? It's true, and in most cases, it's completely legal.
You should be looking at your business from the customer's point of view - that is looking at your business as a client would. What's more important than that is looking at your business from the outside - looking for new trends in the market, new ideas and new ways to advertise and market your business.
One way to look at your competition legally is to purchase goods and services from them. This is pretty basic, and you can learn how they up sell, cross sell and what back end products and services they offer - just by getting these services yourself. This is an incredibly easy way to stay on top of your competition and learn how their kicking butt in the market place. This is perfectly legal and offers you the opportunity to look at their business from a client's perspective, and as a result, it helps you understand how your business looks to your clients as well.
You should be able to answer a few questions about your industry at any given time:
• Who is doing something amazing in your industry that is really grabbing customers?
• What does your competition do for marketing and advertising?
• What is your competition doing that is really shaking things up and making a difference to their bottom lines?
The best thing you can do is to find something that already works and then improve on it with a different spin and better marketing. That's all it takes - personalizing someone else's great idea and making it your own. By doing this, you are increasing your business by doing something that someone else has already proven works - by personalizing it, you aren't copying your competition, you're expanding on an idea and making it your own.
Major businesses do this every day - purchase their competition's products and services, learning how they market themselves to customers, how they up-sell their products, the back end products and services they sell that complement the original products and services and how clients perceive the business.
Looking at your competition as a client will open your eyes to your own business through the eyes of your own clients. It is likely that your competition is reading this article too, and might be doing the same thing - spying on you and your marketing ideas to learn from your successes.
Legally spying on your competition is a tale as old as time - all major corporations do this. It's one of the major reasons competing companies have similar products. Look at the two big soda companies - Coke and Pepsi, for example. How is it that they both came up with the idea for a product that has zero calories yet tastes like regular soda? One followed the other, certainly. One company then took the idea and expanded on it by adding something to the zero calorie drink. Now, the original company can take that idea and expand on it as well, and the circle of business continues.