I’ve seen the habit to only look at direct competition when taking a look at the marketplace.

Keeping a good eye on the competition is going to be part of any successful marketing plan, but who exactly is the competition and who really needs to be watched? It would appear that anyone in your industry is going to be the ones to watch out for, and to an extent this is true, but don’t think that they’re the only ones that are going to be challenging you.

These companies are your direct competition. Anyone directly competing for the exact same customers or who offer a similar service is going to be your direct competition. My guess is that most companies are well aware of their direct competition, but who are you indirectly competing against?

These are the companies who are getting similar marketing or other advertising material done that you are. Consider if you’re getting postcard printing done every other company out there who are also getting that same postcard printing.

Each time you send out a postcard your customers are going to be sorting through a large pile of mail that might be filled with quite a few postcards. Are they going to diligently look through every single postcard in that pile? That’s extremely unlikely. I know I often only look at a few postcards while throwing out all of the others. The ones I look at are the most interesting ones in the pile, and a really good custom postcard is going to overshadow the other postcards, and make me less likely to look at them.

The same is true for brochures, for posters, or for any other marketing you’re doing. You have to be certain that you know what as many companies are doing as possible. If you’re noticing too many companies sending out postcards you might want to hold off on yours for a while. The more saturated a market is with marketing material the harder it will be for yours to be seen and do what it’s supposed to.

Obviously sometimes you just won’t have much of a choice and you’ll just have to send out your marketing material no matter how many other people are doing things. My point isn’t to say that you need to completely change your plans depending on other companies, but you should still be aware of it. Eventually you might end up changing things a little, or improving your marketing to stay ahead and get your material noticed.

Don’t let yourself be fooled into thinking that direct competition is all you have to worry about. In a society as filled with marketing material as ours is, you have a lot of stiff competition to be aware of. Don’t let this scare you away from throwing your hat into the ring, but rather look at it as a chance to make your company that much better, and make your marketing material as good as it can possibly be.