The U.S. Census Bureau tells us that there are just under 30 million businesses operating in the United States. A frequently cited U.S. Commerce Department survey noted that eight out of ten new businesses close up shop within their first five years. Avoid roadblocks to growing your business and make it a point to put together a solid business plan – it can literally be the difference between success and failure.
Competitive Ad vs PR Analysis Tool – Use this tool to analyze the Advertisement vs. PR spending/value ratio for the top 5 competitors in your industry.
Competitive Analysis Tool - This tool will help you complete a competitive analysis including: industry overview, direct/indirect competitor evaluations, competitive map, and competition matrix.
Competitive Website Analysis Tool - Use this tool to evaluate the strengths & weaknesses of your website and compare its effectiveness against your top 2 competitors. This tool can be used to build a business case for website development and to demonstrate a measurable improvement to your capabilities.
Social Media Competitive Tracking Tool – Use this tool to monitor and to compare the key metrics of your competitors Social Media efforts.
Competitive Analysis & Positioning Map – Use this tool to document key buying criteria for each of your market segments, analyze & rate your competitors, and develop a product positioning map.
Product Feature Competitive Analysis – Use this tool to analyze product or feature category leaders among your top 5 competitors.
By Jerry Rackley
If you do business successfully in a free market, it’s virtually guaranteed that you’ll have competition. It doesn’t matter if you’re the market leader or a niche player, you have keep watch over what your competitors are doing. Failure to do so invites disaster, or at least some nasty surprises.
By Jerry Rackley
I recently attempted to dialogue with a journalist who was doing a story about out-of-the-box marketing ideas. I haven’t yet seen the story, but I was bold enough to make a prediction to her in my email:
"I suspect you'll get fewer, quality ideas than you'd like because the companies that are really good at coming up with these ideas use them to gain a competitive advantage. They're unlikely to pull back the curtain and let everyone see what they've got and how they do it."
