Working at a company that serves consumers, I’m all too familiar with how competitive a space it is. Individuals are presented with an incredible amount of choice when shopping online and have real power to promote or sink a company’s good name.
We marketers have a wealth of information available to us too, including what our competitors are up to. Using persistent search tools and RSS you can listen to what any web-focused company is doing, almost in real time. That can provide valuable info and insights. (I use these monitoring tools every day.) But they also present a danger of shifting a company’s focus.
Our stated objective is to serve our customers in the best way possible, which will lead to organic growth. However, each time we see a company in our market place launch a new product or offer an interesting tool on their website, it sets off a minor panic. Why don’t WE offer that product? What is the fastest way that we can develop that feature for OUR website? Soon we’re letting our competitors dictate which products and designs we offer and how. The obvious problem with that scenario is that we will always be following the leader, not catching or surprassing them.
No one in our marketing department would come out and advocate moving to a flawed strategy like this but the mentality tends to creep into our decision making nonetheless. Watching competitors is great if we can remain focused on our customers. If not, it’s time to turn off the firehose of information that is distracting us.