Building your own information product marketing business online, or any online business for that matter, brings up the whole issue of researching your competition.Â
First, its a mistake to assume you don’t want competition. If you don’t see competitive e-books, books, courses, and higher-end information products, then be very cautious about the market you have chosen, chances are there is limited potential for marketing information to that market if there are no competitors.
Second, understanding what your competition is up to is only one aspect of how you plan your infoproduct business strategy. You should also be looking beyond your competition to market trends, buying patterns, customer behavior and even some blue-sky innovation techniques that simply ignore what your competition is doing altogether.
3. Research your competition properly. To help with this point, there is a great post over at the Donald Trump Blog titled “Love Your Competitors” that outlines 4 different questions you should keep in mind when researching your competition:
- Who are your competitors?
- What do they want?
- What can they do?
- What will they do?
The last two questions are pure gold – just because you perceive a strong competitor in your space doesn’t mean he or she has the ability to move in a direction the market wants – and even if they can see the strategy, they may not be able to execute.
You want to identify weaknesses in your competition – there are usually some big ones.
One area to look at immediately is how close your competitor is to their market. For example, if they publish a series of information products on small business, is there evidence that they run frequent brainstorming sessions, call their customers, run a forum, operate a coaching program or other mechanisms that allow them to get especially close to their customers? If so, you need to see what they are doing first-hand – chances are they are messing something up or missing a critical piece that you can then swoop in and fill the gap.Â
Remember, when it comes to researching your ebook topic, infoproduct niche market or idea – love your competitors.
