With a life of freelancing and a small firm behind me, I have accumulated enough experience over the years to understand where and how one can succeed in Eliminate a bigger competitor than you, In almost every playing field.

THE RULES OF ONLINE BUSINESS

There are rules that always work, and others that must be adapted to the situation you are in, but the fact remains that being small undoubtedly has its advantages.

While your large competitor can certainly rely on more firepower than you, on your side you always have some quality that he lacks and, in my opinion, is more effective.

These rules can be applied in any industry: retail, consumer, professional and online business.

So whether your opponent is the famous restaurant around the corner, or the big chain store, these 10 tips based on Internet Marketing strategies (and more), will come in handy and if applied properly, you can eliminate one competitor after another through web marketing strategies that work.

THE SEO WEB MARKETING STRATEGY

The SEO is dead (and you will hear more about it in my next book), but Ignoring SEO is dumb.What you need to do is to use SEO best practices, write things that are useful to your readers, and do it by following a precise strategy. You can't think about your keywords when it's time to create an article for your blog, you have to do it first.

Writing the content is the last and least challenging of a series of steps that you must perform much earlier.

Large companies do not have this foresight, or they do not have people trained to do it.

Those who would know how to write successful content are often busy with other tasks on a daily basis, neglecting blog care and always working today for yesterday. Use smart tools like Market Samurai and leave your slowest competitor dozens of positions behind.

WEB MARKETING AND PAY PER CLICK

Needless to say, but if you want traffic on your pages, you have to pay for it. Don't think of working only on positioning; you risk taking a bitter disappointment or waiting too long before you see any appreciable results. Rather work on the best keywords you can find, and throw in some budget.

What are the key words to bet on?

Simple: find the right balance between traffic generated by each keyword and competition.Avoid the most mundane and obvious keywords, focus on those that bring you fewer but more targeted visitors.

Also here a tool of web marketing to consider is Market Samurai, but you can also try other good tools like Bleu App to make successful and highly targeted Facebook campaigns.

Your biggest competitor usually errs on the side of self-confidence and plays it on brand rather than product or outcome and, as I mentioned earlier, is usually lacking in know-how or resources. Beat it now and see how in a few weeks you can increase your LIKEs tenfold or build a list of contacts that converts.

THE BRAND IN ONLINE BUSINESS

If you want to eliminate a competitor, you have to play it well on your social profiles.

This thing, the big company, can never make it unless you have a charismatic CEO or manager with whom everyone identifies or with whom the product is embodied (think Jeff Bezos of Amazon or those who were Steve Jobs for Apple). Don't worry, such characters can be counted on the tips of your fingers, and unless you want to compete specifically against Amazon, you won't have to worry.

Your competitor can never have a brand as well defined as yours.

He has rules or savoir faire that he inherits from the past, from his status or from the corporate policies he has imposed on himself.

Usually these dinosaurs use social only to sell, sell and sell.

You can use them to give advice, criticize a product, discourage the use of a service, offer free solutions, talk about yourself. Always tell yourself in the first person, and call yourself. Your competitors, on the other hand, will always use the us, and they will speak to all. Except for you.

THE STATISTICS OF AN ONLINE BUSINESS

If you want to eliminate a well-structured competitor with effective web marketing strategies, start with the numbers. Very few do, yet you would have so many answers already written down, right under your nose.

From the statistics you understand what your readers want, what they're looking for, what they haven't found, and what they value most about your online business.

In addition to these rather obvious considerations, you should always focus on the lead generation (capture contacts) and to do it right, you have to scrupulously analyze your statistics all the way down, reading especially the incoming traffic data and comparing it with your individual actions. Start with the posts you made on social networks and see, for each one, what results they brought in terms of visits and conversions.

It takes longer to say it than to do it. Large companies hardly have this sensitivity; they only look at the numbers of the first layer of the report: visits, pages, dwell time, and bounces (when they remember what they are).

Instead of making the most of this tool, they use it more to justify themselves. Don't make the same mistake.

HARNESS YOUR AGILITY

A dinosaur is powerful but slow.

You are definitely less strong but much more agile.

Use this quality to carry out web marketing operations on the fly, as soon as you have an insight, perhaps right after analyzing statistics. Do A/B tests, create and submit reader surveys, hold contests, or simply start publishing content regarding that topic, which your readers liked so much.

All these things really take a few hours, sometimes it's just a matter of minutes.

While the employee working at your competitor's is still trying to get the Facebook page image approved by the higher-up, you will have already surveyed the ground, put content online and captured the first few endorsements.

This is perhaps the thing you need to focus on most if you want to eliminate a competitor: action!

WEAKNESSES AND STRENGTHS OF AN ONLINE BUSINESS

You may be quick to make decisions and take action, but those who are greater than you can rely on resources, human and material, far greater than yours. So first of all, be honest with yourself, analyze your weaknesses and shortcomings, but don't stop to cry about them: act.

Need a good graphic designer? Seek him out now. Not ready in keyword analysis? Buy the best software you can afford.

The important thing is that you are clear about your limitations and are committed to overcoming them.

If your competitor did the same analysis, they would take weeks if not months to find a solution, because before outsourcing to someone they would want to conduct interviews, ask for quotes, and then make an extra effort to trust.

You, on the other hand, just need to find a freelancer in Uk, USA, Russia or India who knows how to program that form just the way you need it on your client's e-commerce site. Use odesk.com And learn to work as a team with the whole world.

INVEST TIME TO LEARN NEW THINGS ABOUT WEB MARKETING

Each Google employee has about 25% of his or her time free from commitments and tasks assigned by colleagues to reflect, evaluate, train, and find new ideas to submit. All this is done on their own.

Do it yourself.

While everyone in the company is busy making a good impression on the boss or meeting month-end goals, wishing the day would end soon, you will have to invest some of your time in training in what you like best to become an expert on the subject.

Buy e-books and online web marketing courses, practice with the software you have installed, make drafts of new projects or develop ideas that came to you while running, walking your daughter or driving. I have found a couple of very interesting ways to work, I use focus@will (it's free and I'll write a more detailed review soon) to better concentrate on each activity (even now that I'm writing this post I'm using it!) and then I mounted a big, big whiteboard on the wall, one of those you can use with erasable colored markers.

When I'm in the studio I put my iPhone in my pocket with focus@will on and headphones, then in front of the whiteboard I write and diagram my best ideas. Finally I take a picture and file it in my management or Evernote.

Know-how is the fundamental if you want to eliminate an inconvenient competitor.

ELIMINATE A COMPETITOR'S ONLINE BUSINESS WITH ALLIANCES

In marketing (especially online) 1+1 = 3 if the addends are quality.

Find a partner or partners of excellence or who can fill your gaps, and you in return, can fill theirs. Companies are very jealous of their processes and often work in compartmentalized ways, not to mention personalities who often feel bypassed or are afraid of being overshadowed.

If you also have this problem, you really have to overcome it.

I happened to back off in some areas of my business precisely because I had found those who knew more than I did, and I got help. Indeed, we pursued a common goal together and acquired new clients, where everyone contributes and is paid fairly.

Alone we could never have done it, together we are an efficient team with everyone's identity as added value.

INVEST IN TECHNOLOGY TO PUSH YOUR BUSINESS ONLINE

It's not about having an iPad, it's about having an iPad and knowing how to use it as a business tool, not as a very cool gadget.

iPads aside, this is about choosing the right tools to work with, and you need to take advantage of them at 110%. I'll give you 3 pieces of advice that I think are fundamental.

1. Whether you work alone or with someone, Write and note everything down, From meetings with others to meetings with colleagues. It's about always knowing what was said, who said it and when they said it. The moment you have to jot down a project, you will know where to go to get the information, without straining your memory too much or risking getting it wrong. You can try Evernote.

2. You need to equip yourself with a project manager, whether you work alone or in a team. Every project always has these characteristics: it is composed of phases, steps or milestones (call them what you will), each phase has a deadline, and you almost certainly have files or data to work with.

A project management system aggregates all of this information for you in one place and allows everyone to access it without having to go searching every time for information in dropbox, in email or who knows where. There are so many I wouldn't know what to recommend.

3. Work in mobility. You must be able to know at all times, wherever you are, what situation you are in, whether your people are going in the right direction, whether your graphic designer has sent you the sketches, whether the clients have confirmed the appointment...

Your giant competitor, on the other hand, is unlikely to be so equipped, and do you know why? Because it has a structure imposed by its IT department that doesn't allow it to upgrade or use the latest tools. Employees cannot choose where to store files, how to share information, which tablet to use, or which paid platforms to enable.

They simply cannot, believe me. The result is often that everyone goes their own way while project managers persist in shouting orders over the phone or sending emails that end up in the never-ending flood of communications that inundates every employee on a daily basis, and which they will remember when it is too late.

I am not talking about the quality of information, but how to handle it. It is a matter of organization and mindset.

YOUR ONLINE BUSINESS MUST BE THE BEST

Needless to say, you can raise all the smoke you want, but the substance sooner or later you have to prove yourself.

There are also 3 key points here: be honest with your customers, work with only the best people, offer the best customer service.

If you are an employee with goals imposed on you from above every month, you will do anything to meet them, so you will never be 100% honest. You instead be clear about what you can and cannot offer, you will be appreciated much more by your customer without risking disappointing them, and losing them, later.

Your competitor has many resources he can rely on, but he often puts together people who don't know each other, work in different ways, or worse, can't stand each other.

You have the luxury of work only with the best and only with those you want, take advantage of it. The famous saying "everyone is useful, no one is indispensable" is a big bullsh%£$ invented by managers to justify their choices and conscience when they have to sawing someone off.

I like more the saying "work with the best, and you won't regret it."

Finally, customer care. It takes very little: an FAQ, a ticket system or a toll-free number. I recommend ZenDesk.com but there are really many on the Net... The important thing is that then there is someone to respond to customers 🙂

Conclusion.

This post, when I started writing it, was supposed to be less than half as long but it was so funny that I couldn't resist, and I haven't stopped since. Believe me, I could have said so much more but risked becoming boring. There are so many tools and so many ideas to take advantage of out there, get busy because your competitor even if bigger doesn't necessarily have the same energy or skills as you. If you want to eliminate an inconvenient competitor who is bigger than you, more structured, and has more resources, you can do it, but you have to get busy now.

I leave you with this nice maxim: On the Web, size does not matter.