I know what you’re thinking. “Copy my competitors? Isn’t that unethical? Isn’t that illegal? I’m not doing that!” But wait—hear me out. I’m not telling you to cleverly steal their marketing plan and duplicate their strategies. I’m not asking you to plagiarize anything. What I’m asking you do is simple.
Look around your industry. Watch what’s going on. Study your competition. Follow what works. Why wouldn’t you? Your competitors are selling their wares to the same target market you are. And if what they’re doing is working, you can bet it could work for you too! This is a strategy in itself that can greatly increase the effectiveness of your sales pieces. Here are three excellent reasons to copy your competitors.
Learn From Others’ Mistakes
Everybody makes mistakes. Unfortunately, even the smallest mistakes in direct mail can be detrimental to your campaign’s success—and costly. When it comes to direct mail, you want to minimize the errors you make as much as possible. Some of it is just trial and error. But sometimes mistakes are 100% avoidable.
For example, imagine you own one of two popular shoe stores in town. Your competitor has opened a second location and sent out a long, eight page letter to announce the opening. They included great information on the business, impressive facts about the quality of their shoes, and had a clear invitation to come check out the new location. When the day finally arrived… Nothing.
Well, that didn’t work. There are actually two big problems with the piece described above. One, there is no real incentive for prospects to come down. If they aren’t in the market for a new pair of shoes, they’re given no other reason to act. Two, eight pages is too long to announce a store opening. The format your competitor used does not fit their offer.
Now you know better. Seeing that their opening was not a huge success, you know not to use a similar approach when you open your next location.
Learn More About Your Market
Almost the opposite…