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Today we are looking at the importance of small businesses keeping an eye on their businesses keeping it on on their
competition
joining us to lend his media and small business experience is David Koch
David, thanks for joining us. Good to be here Alex
Now from your long history in small business just how important is it for small businesses to
watch their competitors
Look it's absolutely critical to watch what your competitors are doing
it's such a tough competitive market out there at the moment
everyone is trying to get that unique advantage to get that
that little bit extra over their competitor's
and that you, that's what your competitors are trying to do to you, they're
trying to go to your customers and say
"Hey, we've got better distribution we've got better delivery we've got better product range,
we've got better sales."
Now no matter whether you're big or small
you should be more monitoring that competition and trying to keep
one step ahead of them and it's so easy to do
but we just don't do well. Ok I so you touched on distribution there, product, services is the obvious
ones
what about in the media and marketing space how important is that?
That's where you get a lot of your intelligence
you see, in the media and particularly in the business media
they're all about trying to bring the latest news
Information, a bit a bit different about a whole range of
different companies
and that's your best source of intelligence, that is
not only general business press but also and more importantly
trade press and always monitoring that trade press
and the business press for any stories on your competitors
any speeches being given by your competitor's
all the bosses of your competitors and people
and business people love to talk about themselves they love to show off about
what they doing and how innovative they are
them showing off gives you the information you need on what
they're doing
so you can counter it. Ok so it's not just about keeping up
but also getting ahead being proactive in the space.
Absolutely, if you know what your competitors are doing then it's your challenge then to say
ok, how do I trump them how do I do better than them
so I can go into a joint suppliers and say
Yeah they might be doing that but hey we got this and this
Ok and what does the process look like
You can do it either just reading the press yourself.
Or there are plenty of services that you can monitor
the media online like the search engines that you can use
the specialist media monitoring organisations
that make access to that information so easy
and it's really important to do to it
Some terrific tips there David, thanks for your time. Thanks