Starting an Online Business All-in-One For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Finding Your Place in the Market

You can quite easily sit in a room with fellow business colleagues and say, “Hey, let's do what Google does!” or “Let's take the same approach to this problem as Microsoft does” or “What would Yahoo! do in a situation like this?” Some of the business concepts now practiced by the largest companies are sound, and others simply do not apply to the area you occupy. Although you can easily latch on to a good idea or latest trend, it's more important to understand why that trend is useful, to see whether you can apply it to your company.

Your business has to offer something unique to distinguish it from your competition. If you practice the same techniques, marketing messages, and focus as everybody else, your message begins to blend with everyone else's. After you become part of the crowd, determine what motivates your potential customers to shop with you rather than with someone else.

Focusing on your strengths

In the area of competition, you shouldn't follow other companies' techniques that highlight your weaknesses. If you provide a high level of service and charge a premium price for your products, following the techniques of Walmart is counterproductive to your business. Its effort to provide the masses with merchandise that matches its slogan, “Always Low Prices — Always,” doesn't help you if you lower prices only occasionally to compete with ...