In another post, I talk about how competitors influence the cost of your digital marketing. I want to look at another aspect your competitors influence: Your success.
Digital marketing doesn’t depend solely on the quality of the services being rendered. Of course, that does have a lot to do with it, but your competition has a large impact on how successful your campaign is in two ways:
1. The Level of Your Success
Unless a competitor flames out, you will never overcome them by doing less. That doesn’t mean working harder, but it does mean working smarter. And that very well may require working harder.
You don’t need to match everything a competitor does point for point. But you do need an effective strategy that takes these factors into consideration. Even if you catch their pace strategically, that will only keep you from losing ground. If you want to gain ground, you have to match and beat them at their own game.
2. The Immediacy of Your Success
Working harder and smarter than your competition doesn’t mean you’ll overtake them immediately. Or anytime soon, for that matter. It all depends on how long they’ve been in the race before you started, and how much better you are doing at your online marketing than they are.
If you’re barely doing more, or barely doing better, it’s going to take a while to catch up. It could be years. But the more in you invest in online marketing (and I don’t just mean dollars; I mean a smart strategy as well) the less time it will take to catch up. But again, how much time depends on how far ahead they are.
The bottom line is you have to really consider how you stack up against your competition when it comes to the results you expect from digital marketing. Failing to consider these two aspects will lead to disappointment, even while your campaign performs strongly given the circumstances.