The CUSTOMER Decides Who Our Competitors Are - Not Us! | Small Business #Marketing

Every business wants to win against the competition. Sometimes it's easy to name your competitors, but most times it's a lot harder than you may think. Imagine you're selling ice cream. You may think that your competitors are other businesses that also sell ice cream, but the truth is your competition is much wider than that. You're not just competing with other ice cream sellers, you're competing with every business that provides a similar end result in the mind of the customer. At the end of a long hot day, sure, maybe they want an ice cream. But maybe they prefer a smoothie. Or a snow cone. Or even a chilled glass of Chardonnay. If your competitor has feature X, it doesn't necessarily follow that the feature is recognized, prioritized, or valued by its customers. It's often not a like-for-like comparison. I could use an iPad to write down my ideas, but I could also use a laptop. Or pencil and paper? Now, looking at these three options, you may think that each of them are in very different categories and not in direct competition with each other. But depending on the context, they may well be.