We know that 90% of startups will die in the first three years of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs need to keep an eye on their competitors' trends, keep abreast of news and social media content, and quickly obtain all kinds of important data to ensure that they stay in the poor "10%".
In order to help entrepreneurs defeat their competitors, the author here introduces some useful methods to help you understand the industry in depth and "monitor" the trend of the entrepreneurial world in a timely manner.
Pay attention to the financial (financing/divestment) information of competitors
Nowadays, news updates on Weibo and WeChat are very fast, so it is not too difficult to know the financial information of your competitors in real time. If your competitors happen to be the largest in the industry, then there will be more relevant information. So in many cases, it is how you find useful information from the massive data.
For example, if your competitors' sales decline, but their profits increase, then you need to pay attention to whether their pricing model has changed? Will the other party's adoption of this strategy have an impact on your own product pricing? Don't drown yourself in a pile of overloaded data. You must know what specific financial data you need to monitor, and then how to feed these data back into your company's business strategy
Win the war of talents
Whether it's small startups in the circle or industry leaders, you need to know who has been recruited by these companies, who has changed jobs, and why these job hoppers are disappointed. If a company suddenly recruits three salespeople in a short time, are they to increase the strength of the sales team or to replace some dissatisfied employees?
Have a broad vision
Don't just focus on your opponents. You need to have a broader vision and understand global information. Important events, political news, and public relations scandals may seem irrelevant, but they may really have a butterfly effect and affect the bottom line of competitors. For example, in the British election at the beginning of this year, both parties admitted to ensure that domestic housing prices do not increase too fast, so this information is crucial for start-ups in the real estate industry to win traditional enterprises. Understanding public sentiment and understanding why people are pessimistic or optimistic are crucial for predicting future trends.
Focus on traditional media headlines
When you pay attention to what's happening in the world, don't ignore the traditional media. If you don't have time to read the daily news, make sure you can understand the headlines of traditional media, or read in-depth news reviews once a week.
In addition, you also need to know where the competitor's name appears in the traditional media news of which country or region, because it means that they have extended their business contacts to that place.
Better communication and participation with customers and prospects
Make sure that customers can get the maximum value from your products, so as to obtain user stickiness and prevent them from using competitors' products. You can also take the initiative to guide customers. Of course, you need to ensure that you provide customers with the information they need. You can also use various channels, such as email, mobile push messages, App built-in information, and so on.
In addition, if you launch new products or new functions, you also need to let customers know in time. You can directly send e-mail to customers, because sometimes "simple and rude" is more effective. However, the most important thing is to feed back customers or potential customers in a timely manner after the email is sent.
Win in "social media"
If you want to win in the battle field of social media, you may need some tools to help you track the situation of your competitors, and you can also evaluate the influence of your competitors and your own social media. In your industry, which startups have opened official microblogs or official WeChat accounts, what information they push every day, what comments users have under their social media accounts, and so on. There are many social media analysis tools on the market, so I won't go into details here.
Another use of social media is that it can be a bridge between you and your users. For example, you can publish some targeted content on some special days to see what emotional reactions your brand or news story will bring to users, which will help you build feelings with users.
I hope this article is helpful to you who just entered the entrepreneurial circle, so that you can better understand your competitors, your industry, and even the whole world.