Competitive business

[HWT]

A new year is upon us, and another business has started in our area, doing virtually word for word what we do. They have a yellow pages ad, we got so little work from our yellow pages ad we dropped ours this year as we couldn't justify the expense. The business is essentially a hobby but it would be very nice to ramp it up a bit and make some Real Money. We make quite a lot off unrelated sites with advertising on at the moment, absolutely nothing to do with the business.

How on earth do we make any point of difference? We already get very little business and certainly couldn't live off what we make.

It is scarey how similar his new ad is to ours. The same services (less one), but he lists dozens of MS certifications and 8 years experience and we haven't bothered to mention ours (which are considerably higher - I'm graduate qualified IT with a lot of industry experience, and longer - 35 years total). Judging by his facebook friends list and extreme spelling errors on his website he is very young. There are several other people in the area who also do similar things, and have been doing it longer.

We are a computer repair and sales shop, working from home, and can do all the usual computery things. Very generic, not unique at all, and already quite overloaded as the population here is < 2000. I suspect our new competitor is going to be disappointed at how little work he gets. Our one major point of difference is we can do websites, graphic design and 3D work and he is pushing the computer sales/business IT/networking angle.

The only two things I can think of that might make a long-term difference are both expensive. One is to invest in a good video camera and look at moving into advertising - you wouldn't believe how terrible rural TV advertising is - as it wouldn't be especially difficult, except we can't provide the background music (most companies seem to have the same jingle they've always had anyway). We have a background in 3D animation, computer game development, graphic design etc so this does fit.

The other is to get certified as a data/telephone cable installer, something that is sorely lacking here. Very few courses run for this without you having 'proper' experience as an electrician. The other half's father is an electrician and he has been an unpaid assistant for donkey's years and knows the drill so again, this fits.

We're quite antisocial. We probably fail most badly on the marketing side of things - meet and greet. We only moved to this town mid last year so we don't have a big network.

Remember we are in a small town, not a huge city. The biggest local reach we could get is 6000 men, women and children.

Any tips or suggestions?

[Brendan]

Interesting conundrum you are in.. do you know if your competitor is doing it full time.. or just on the side like yourselves?

In terms of a point of difference, I have checked out your website and given the market you are targeting, I was surprised you don't offer remote assistance to your clients.

Is this something you have considered, are most of the issues you face software/user issues - or are they all mainly hardware?

Since you live in such a large rural area.. this could be a point of difference.. if the broadband network there can handle it of course!

I would also look at doing or getting some SEO and Internet Marketing done on your website that is location / area specific, the site doesn't seem to be optimized with that in mind.. so it could be another way to get potential new clients to your site (if you need any help with that stuff.. drop me a PM)

PPC advertising could also be a cost effective way to drum up business, it can be heavily targeted to location and demographics so you know that the ads are being shown to the most relevant people.

[HWT]

What we've found so far is that virtually all of our business has been very average home users whose computers are so far fried they don't even work at all, hence not offering remote assistance. We will travel though. Noone has wanted a new system, only upgrades and repairs - you can get full systems at the local electronics store.

If the competitor is doing it fulltime he's living on thin air. I don't think anyone around here does it fulltime, they're all parttime hobby backyarders like us.

The site has actually just been SEO'd and directory listings for it come up right up the top when you do a location search. But with internet penetration so low here and a track record of customers with utterly dead computers (ie, no internet connectivity) I'm not overly fussed about being found online. We've tweaked the site to match the users so it is pitched heavily at light, not very computer literate users not businesses.

Maybe direct mail local businesses offering them ecommerce websites and computer support, listing the benefits? I know I open hand-addressed mail and throw out flyers and so forth. Wouldn't cost more than $80 or so to hit virtually all the businesses around here.

This is an offline marketing exercise not an online one. Back to basics.

[ray_223]

Hi,

Living in such a small community I believe your only option is to migrate your business into other areas that aren't location based.
You mention some things such as 3D, graphic design etc.
I would look at trying to expand somewhere into that area where you can develop a niche service that can be sold nationally or internationally.

I wouldn't suggest just doing standard design or standard 3D design - pick one small area (where demand exists) and become an expert in that area.

You will need to do a reasonable amount of research (to make sure a market does exist) - and also take a bit of a gamble spending some long hours and small amount of cash to get it up and running - but if you want to live in a small town and have a reliable income I believe you need to sell outside your local community.

Good luck

[HWT]

We don't need to make our living off this - just needs to top up our other income which is much more fixed (which will be mostly rent by the end of this year). We already get a reasonable amount of international passive income. Our income is barely $200-300 a month below what it needs to be so we'd need to fix a computer or two a month and/or do a website every month or two. But if someone else comes along and takes what business there is, given it is already spread very thin ...

So I'd rather stay local. If we had to make $50,000 a year off this we'd be screwed, but we need around $5k more tops. Sinking too much time into this detracts from our 'real' (3D programming and international appeal niche market - but unpaid for some years to come) work :)

So just looking for ideas to actually GET that guaranteed couple of hundred a month extra from a small market. Preferably before the other guy does. This is just a supporting paid hobby to keep the bills at bay and will never be a 'real' job, but we need it.

[ray_223]

[snip]
We're quite antisocial. We probably fail most badly on the marketing side of things - meet and greet. We only moved to this town mid last year so we don't have a big network.
[snip]
Any tips or suggestions?

Ok, from your first post.
The tip is to get out more.

Get involved in all types of activities in the town. Any business in a small town won't get extra business because of SEO or an improved website! You will pickup more business by meeting and talking to people.

For the home user even put fliers up in shops and local notice boards.

If your main focus is on another business idea I wouldn't put any more effort into starting a 3rd business like cabling or video commercials - You need to focus on the things that will give you the best long term benefit!

[HWT]

We had flyers up but they keep vanishing and lo, there's the competitor's flyers ... hmmmm. The plot thickens. I rented my house out with local noticeboard flyers and they *didn't* vanish within a day, I took them down myself after a few weeks. We have an ad in the local monthly paper too, but that has only been out a few days. I expect next month's to have the new competitor in it too. Ours has a charicature of my other half in it so it stands out.

Yes, we do need to get out more. And give everyone we meet a fridge magnet or something. But cabling ... our local cabler has been out of action for a few months, Telstra won't do it, and every time we go anywhere people ask if we can do cabling. You want a cabler, you need to bring them from Adelaide. It is a 1 week course, $2000. You're probably right about adverts though, that one would be even harder to break into and likely more expensive. Scratch that idea.

Short term I'm leaning more and more towards compiling a list of local businesses within a 50km radius and sending each a letter/flyer saying what we do, hand addressed. With a fridge magnet or card in there too. I think that would work better than a letterbox drop. I haven't got the fridge magnets printed yet though lol - I wasn't expecting someone else to pop out of the woodwork doing exactly what we do promoting it in exactly the same way we've been promoting ours.

And the entire town flocks to the lions club donut van every other Friday. I wonder if the donut van lady (who adores my offspring) would let us stick fridge magnets all over the donut van near the serving hutch? Can't hurt to ask!

Getting some ideas here. Ideas are good.

And before I go getting magnets printed, does anyone have an opinion of fridge magnets as a marketing tool? I like them, but then I have a fridge covered in local business fridge magnets. They are harder to lose than business cards.

[Carl Taylor]

HWT, the best way to know how to differentiate youself is to ask your target market.

As has been suggested get out and network and while you are doing it, find out why your current customers keep coming back to you, those who use others and not you why do they use these other businesses. What do they hate most about computer companies. etc...

Do you research then compile this research into your Unique Selling Point and Create a Powerful Guarantee.

Good Luck

[HWT]

Most people are coming to us because we're new and they got stuffed around by someone else. Which means, of course, that the trick is not to stuff around any of our new customers.

My to-do list at the moment is just to be a bit more proactive, as above - tell businesses we regularly use what we actually DO rather than merely being customers, and generally get out there.

I just ordered new business cards and a small batch of fridge magnets. We moved on quite short notice last year, so I've just been writing our new location/number on the back of the old business cards, which is fine if you are talking to someone in person but not so fine to mail them out or leave them on other businesses countertops. It was the whole "update our address" online thing that made me notice our competitor in the first place, he popped up while I was trying to fix our Google listing. If we'd got our initial Yellow Pages listing under the new address we'd probably be doing a lot better by now, but it had to be in by Christmas and we moved a few months later. Oh well.

[allanuber]

If you're not that good with the marketing side, and with networking, then maybe change your approach and try to be more focussed on the same line of business, but for a different customer group.

Is there a single, large customer / account you can focus on 100% to win over? $5K/annum target revenue is *nothing* for the right big group. $100/week to retain talented, hands on, reliable techy resources who are multiskilled across network, desktop and web technolgies shouldn't be that hard a sell.

Who's big in town, are there an branches of a national brand, is there a major provider or company in or near town that'd pay $100/week just to have out of hours support requests redirected to you?

[rowan]

I also live in a small town. Being 'antisocial' just does not work in small towns - did you come from a city?
When you are new, people will only come to you if they really have to. It takes years to be accepted, and only then when you have 'proven' yourself as a contributing member of the community.

Small towns exist because of volunteering, it is a great way to get noticed, especially if you do one or two free jobs for the clubs. Get involved.
Don't have time... don't want to... I hear you say? The dynamics are so different in a small town to a larger one that a business can't survive if you don't fit in. People will seek you out if/when they trust you but it takes time, and a lot of work.


Cheers,
Rowan