An egular competitive analysis can help you identify opportunities to innovate, promote your business and enhance your products or service, as well as outshine the competition.
A competitive analysis will help you determine where your business is performing well, where it needs to improve and which trends are important to follow.
If your company isn’t growing as quickly as you would like or if your competitors are winning orders from your ideal customers, do a competitive analysis.
How to do a competitive analysis
Josh Rovner (business consultant, bestselling author of Unbreak the System, Diagnosing, and Curing the Ten Critical Flaws In Your Company, Lioncrest Publishing, 2020), shared nine steps with us for conducting a competitive analysis.
1. You will need to identify the services or products you wish to evaluate.
They will most likely be the products and services that have the greatest potential for growth or generate the most revenue.
2. Look for direct competitors.
These companies compete in roughly the same market, offering similar products and services. Accounting professionals, for example, compete with other accountants.
3. Pinpoint indirect competitors
They target the same market, but offer different products and services. For example, accountants competing against bookkeepers.
4. Examine replacement competitors.
These companies offer a product or service that is not yours, but they address the same problem as yours (e.g. apps that help entrepreneurs).
5. Find out which areas of the businesses of your competitors are worth looking into.
These could include pricing, distribution, and delivery strategies, market shares, new products or service coming to market, long-standing high-spending customers, quality after-sales support and which sales and marketing channels they use.
6. All competitors should be researched.
Most competitors may not have any operational or accounting records, particularly non-public ones. It will be easier for you to find other useful information, such as target customers, product features and staff type, price points, and employee types.
7. Do not forget to document your research and provide a written analysis.
Your document should be both substantive and useful, but not too long that staff can’t read. You and your team can use comparison charts and graphs to help visualize your market position relative to your competitors.
8. Identify the areas that need improvement and make the necessary changes.
You could improve the quality of your products and services by adding or changing a feature, making it more affordable, or providing after-sales support. A better CRM can help you manage your leads better and achieve better ROI.
Rovner suggests including information on related trends in your region and market to get a better picture of the whole competitive landscape. “Document the threats that could impact your business and identify the opportunities that might be of benefit to you more than your competitors.
9. Keep track of your results.
To determine whether the changes made were successful, you can measure your sales using a profit-and-loss statement.
================================
What is a Business Microloan and How Does It Work?
A microloan is a loan that provides short-term funds at low interest to a small business.
Small-dollar loans can be used to help start-ups and grow their businesses with microloans.
Although microloans are a great way for your company to build credit, there are very few U.S. lenders that offer them.
Microloans are not like business loans and can be used to purchase a wide variety of goods or services.
This article is intended for entrepreneurs who are interested in learning more about microloans and how to get one.
What is a Microloan? How does it work?
There are many options for small business loans in the world of business lending. Each type of loan has its own terms and conditions, payment periods, interest rates and qualifications. Microloans are no exception.
A microloan, a small loan that can be borrowed between $500 and $50,000, must be repaid on a temporary basis. These loans are generally provided by non-profit organizations and only a fraction of U.S. business loans. Kabbage estimates that only 400 financial institutions offer microloans to entrepreneurs. The interest rates on these loans are typically between 12%-18% with the intention of supporting small businesses in their growth.
Who should consider applying for a microloan.
Microloans were created to support small businesses. A microloan is a great option for those who need quick funding to start their business, but don’t have the credit score to be able to borrow from traditional lenders. Microlenders have much lower loan requirements than traditional lenders, which makes microloans considerably easier to get.
Many microlenders also help small businesses to get off the ground. They use their loans to address inequities in capital distribution to small businesses in certain areas of the country. Although it is difficult for anyone to get a traditional loan from a bank for a small business venture, the chances of getting funding are significantly higher for people of color and women than for white men. Even worse are those who live in minority communities and are struggling.
Are you eligible for a microloan
Microloans can be viewed by professionals as a “starter loan” to help businesses build credit and then move on to a more traditional loan. Entrepreneurs find them much easier to get than regular loans. Although the application process is much faster and easier than traditional loans, experts recommend that you prepare yourself for it.
============================
LinkedIn Marketing Hacks for Growing Your Business
LinkedIn is an excellent place to network and grow your business. These marketing tips will assist you in making the most of LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is a social media platform that allows you to increase brand awareness and build relationships with customers.
Businesses can use LinkedIn to market to potential customers or partners by posting engaging content and taking part in industry discussions.
LinkedIn can be used by business owners to increase their email marketing lists through their professional connections.
What is LinkedIn Marketing?
LinkedIn isn’t just for job seekers and professionals. LinkedIn is used by millions of professionals every day to expand their professional networks and advance their careers. However, LinkedIn can also be used to help you grow your business. LinkedIn is a social media platform that connects your business and millions of people. This allows you to establish relationships with other companies and individuals to help boost your brand.
What is LinkedIn Marketing?
LinkedIn isn’t just for job seekers and professionals. LinkedIn is used by millions of professionals every day to expand their professional networks and advance their careers. However, LinkedIn can also be used to help you grow your business. LinkedIn is a social media platform that connects your business and millions of people. This allows you to establish relationships with other companies and individuals to help boost your brand.
How to create your LinkedIn business page
A business LinkedIn page is as important as a website. A LinkedIn business page can be created for free, provided you have an email address and a company name. To show you step-by-step how to create a page for your company, we pulled from LinkedIn’s help pages.
LinkedIn Marketing Tips to Grow Your Business
Business News Daily reached out to experts marketers and business leaders to learn how to best use LinkedIn marketing to grow your company. Here are their thoughts.
1. Connect with highly targeted customers.
LinkedIn’s targeting is unrivalled in digital advertising. Small businesses have the ability to pinpoint the industry, job title and company size of the people who are most likely to buy their product or services. If you sell customer support software to small American businesses, for example, you could set your advertising campaigns so that they only show to companies with less than 100 employees. Keep your customers in mind.
My company helps small businesses to generate leads through LinkedIn. We get feedback from clients about the kind of people who make them high-quality customers. We use LinkedIn to find people that match their criteria and then we introduce them. We do the rest so that it appears like the client is introducing himself, but they do all of the work. We then keep in touch with those who have expressed an interest using LinkedIn. To keep our clients’ names in the minds of their network, we post status updates daily and blog posts on LinkedIn every week. Monthly emails are sent out that provide information on the problems our clients solve and the results they have achieved. We offer offers such as a webinar invitation or whitepaper. This results in a systematic, cost-effective, and easy way to generate leads. All the work is done via LinkedIn.