Do you feel like you’re competing with the entire world?  Do you feel like you’re always behind the eight-ball?  Well stop competing with everyone under the sun!  You get to choose who you’re going to compete with!

You may not believe it but it’s true.  You get to choose your competitors.  How?  By narrowly defining what business and market you’re in.  You do this by determining what it is that you do that’s better than anyone else (your core competence) and what benefits you bring to customers.  From these two things you can determine your market in such a way that you’re the best at it (ideally).

Why does this work?  Because once you’ve narrowly defined your market and you understand what you’re good at and what benefits you’re bringing to customers you can effectively market to the right people with the right message.

Let’s look at an example:  Say you paint custom murals on walls.  You may feel like you’re competing with painters and interior designers and wallpaper companies, etc.  But what is it that you do better than anyone else?  Paint custom pictures on walls.  Do you do it for homeowners or also for companies?  Do you just paint interior walls or also exterior walls?  Now you’ve narrowed your market.  Here’s the important part: what benefits do you offer to the customer?  custom, unique art painted on their walls.  So who are you competing with?  Probably other mural painters – but only for the types of murals you offer – what sets you apart?  Your experience? Your uniqueness?  Quality?  The benefits combined with what sets you apart is how you determine your marketing message.  Now you have the who, the how and the what.  And it turns out that all those companies you thought you were competing with, the interior designers, painters, etc., are probably actually just great places to network with in terms of referring business back and forth.

Understanding your business in terms of what you actually do, what you do best, and what benefits you offer to customers can help you narrow your market and focus on the customers that will actually do business with you.  Sure you can go after a wider market, but the percentage of sales for that audience will be much smaller, meaning you have to work much harder to get each sale.

If you’re interested in more on this topic, I’ve written two posts on my blog that go into this in a bit more detail: Who Are You Exactly? and Figuring Out Who You’re Actually Competing With.

(photo by eschipul @ Flickr CC)

This is a guest post by Sarah Worsham, CEO & Web Strategist at Sazbean Consulting and blogging at Sazbean.com. Sarah is passionate about creating Internet strategies to help companies reach their business goals. Sarah provides guidance through Internet Marketing, Strategy & Business consulting. Connect with her on Twitter, Facebook or the Sazbean Facebook Page.