Whether you’re an athlete trying to break a record, a growing entrepreneur trying to squeeze into a saturated market, or a well-established business trying to innovate, competition pushes us to perform better.

It’s natural to want to avoid conflict, but facing challenges head on and embracing the good that comes from competition can lead to groundbreaking ideas and give you better insight into the strengths and weaknesses of your business.

This article will cover five ways in which competition in the marketplace can raise the bar for your business, strengthen your brand, and give you a competitive advantage. 

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Increases Market Awareness and Demand

Competition between several different brands in the same market often leads to a lot of marketing, advertising, and promoting, which brings awareness to the kind of product or service that you offer. More awareness surrounding your specific market is a good thing in the long run, as it greatly expands the group of potential leads.

Of course, it’s preferable if new customers find your business first, so top-notch marketing should be a priority to ensure that your brand has high visibility.

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Drives Innovation

Innovation keeps your brand fresh and up to date with the changing market and the world of business as a whole. If you stop innovating, things will continue to progress without you, and your business can lose relevance and revenue quickly. While innovation should always be on the mind of a business owner, having competition can accelerate it greatly. 

When you need to outsell and outperform your competitor, you are constantly improving internal processes, keeping a look out for the next best software, and thinking of ways to improve your product or service. Innovation not only ensures that you beat out your competitor, but that your customers stay satisfied and impressed with your brand.

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Pushes You to Find a Competitive Advantage

In a similar vein as innovation, competition encourages you to consider your strengths and weaknesses and find a niche in the market. What do you do better than your competitors? That’s your competitive advantage. 

If your brand does something that others are not, such as putting a useful spin on an old product or providing a service in a unique way, you can fill the gaps in the market and make your business more attractive to consumers. For example, if your competition has a well-liked product but their customer service is rated poorly, make sure that your service is exceptional.

Competition can give your brand a strength it didn’t have before. Solidifying your business’s purpose and goals is a valuable gift that may only come through the adversity of challenging your competition.

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Provides Valuable Data on Customer Preferences and Behavior

A great deal can be learned from analyzing your own company’s data regarding customer reactions, interactions, and purchases, but monitoring customers’ behavior surrounding competitors can also provide a wealth of valuable information. If a competitor is more profitable than you, study their strategies and compare them to your own to get insight into customer-winning techniques you might not be using.

This goes hand in hand with considering your brand’s strengths and weaknesses. If you know you have problems with customer retention, look to competitors that have more success in that area to get ideas and make innovations to your own business model.

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Increases Motivation and Encourages a Bias Toward Action

It’s human nature to want to outperform our “adversaries”. When the success of your business is on the line, it increases motivation even more. Though setting your own goals is a necessary part of owning a successful business, having a competitor to measure your success against can heighten your determination to reach those goals and encourage a bias toward action.

Having a bias toward action means turning ideas into reality. Making goals doesn’t push a business forward, accomplishing goals does, and that can only be achieved through action. Having competition in the marketplace increases your forward momentum when taking action on your goals and ideas and prevents unneeded stagnation. The only way to accomplish things is to do them!

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The Bottom Line...

To learn more, sign up for the Madak Guide and check out Module 4, which goes in-depth into competition in the marketplace and competitive analysis. Want to get a feel for the Madak Guide before committing? Take a look at Module 1, which is now available for free!