Vitality of competitive intelligence: can’t imagine a business life without competitors

Come on, it is time to wake up and to ensure where you stand smarter than your competitors do. To determine where you are standing and how much your uniqueness catches the eyes of your customers, you will need to see your world from your competitors’ eyes. The term ‘competitive intelligence’ refers to how much you know about your competitors, your familiarity with their strengths, weaknesses, their opportunities, their trends and technical advancements. Nowadays, no business would go on the right track without the concern on competitive trends, which denotes the importance of competitive intelligence. Most people just misinterpret the scope of competitive intelligence inside a small circle that lacks to look into wider aspects of competitive intelligence such as:

1.      Inclusive observation of competitors on their abilities of gains and vulnerabilities of threats

2.      Implementing strategies to guard our business if they beat us with their strengths and to beat them using their vulnerabilities

3.      Coming up with a killing product or an idea that influences in their demise  

4.      Incorporating the strategies with promotional campaigns to best inform why our business is unique, best and valuable from all our competitors.  

5.      Practice the strategy of networking for the sake of being industrial friends and to make some of our competitors as the supply chain integrators

Bearing the above concerns, it is clear that competitive intelligence is not just a matter of collecting data about competitors but it has more than to do. Some companies use internet as the prime source of gathering information about competitors, some others go for annual reports and other published data from competitors. However, some of the companies send their employees as the investigative work forces into the competitors’ organizations...somehow these blacksheeps often get caught by the organizations later and will be punished for their illegal deal.       

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The real game to play; make fun with the Real estate game with a well-defined niche market

Millions of people who played well in share markets have turned to Real estate and the only reason behind is that, yes, it is profitable. However, the question arises at the moment is that do everyone play the game successfully? The answer may be yes if it was a grocery business or some other, but for real estate, one need to keep on concentrating what is happening around, who has entered into the market newly and on the ways to get more business. Now what is there with a niche approach to do with a Real estate business? Let’s imagine everyone is interested in buying lands and reselling them at a profit, so that what differentiates you from others and for what reason a customer has a need to get your help? Current winners in this game actually have well identified the under-served needs in this market and only investing their efforts into those specific markets. For an example, in Sri Lanka, there is a constant increase in the percentage of females who want to be single, and there are even people who only build apartments for single women. Therefore, these apartments are only sold to single women and when they get married, they must sell the apartment to other single women as stated and agreed before in the agreement. Therefore, a Real-Estate broker may limit his efforts into this specific niche and so better the chances he knows many people in this niche and better the chances for that they will need his help and to get succeed soon in the business. Also a person who only focuses on ‘Estates’ may further narrow the focus to ‘papaya estate’ or ‘coconut estate’ and is one good way to win in this game and to make a life with those things in which you are inspired about. Milles (2011) writes in his article about Real Estate success ‘An agent in Marin County California that loves and is very knowledgeable about horses and running horse farms. Her niche is focused on buying and selling horse farms. Do you think she is likely to do extra reading on the subject? Do you think she likes writing her monthly newsletter? Do you think her target looks forward to conversations with her? Do you think she get referrals? Yes, Yes, Yes. Do you want to compete with that type of expertise? No. She stands out from the crowd and is a magnet for referrals for this type of transaction. In addition, she loves what she does’.

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Niche market examples; broader niches and narrower niches

 What would be the most enchanting way to taste the success in a small business other than selecting and targeting a specific niche where you have the capabilities and potential to market your benefits? However, when it comes to a niche market, one may doubt whether to focus on a narrow niche or a broader one. Most of the people have argued that a narrowly focused niche market would bring scores of sales to a small business where there are no much dollars to invest in promotional activities. If you have noticed in the industry of internet, the sites that bring millions of sales specifically keep on focusing on one specific niche area. For an example, anyone who is interested in online business would know about Weblogs since this site brings millions of dollars from the Google Adsense program. However, what should be noted here is that, this is not a site that focuses on a wide range of businesses, and the prime business behind Weblogs is to allow internet traders to create blogs and to network with each other. So that, the focus here is narrow and the earnings really get boosted and yet, the question goes now is what is the difference between a narrow niche and a broad niche? I have a listed a shorted list of examples below which you find interesting.

Broad niche market examples

·         A company that produces facial cream for ladies who have skin problems.

·         A garment business that only manufactures Bamboo clothing for ladies, which is really good for their skin.

·          An ice- cream company that produces high quality and very expensive ice- creams for upper class people.

Narrow niche market examples

·         A company that only produces bleaching facial creams for ladies who have skin problems.  

·         A garment business that only manufactures Bamboo clothing for ladies who are above excel size. 

·         An ice-cream company that produces high-quality and very expensive alcoholic ice-creams for upper class people.

Hope you enjoyed this writing and if you have something to ask, do not be hesitated to contact me via nichecrunch@hotmail.com 

Small apparel factories in Asian countries do benchmark in their niche markets by promoting CSR initiatives
Is it possible to make million dollars with specifc niche market?

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