DIGITAL STARTUP SOCIETY BLOG — 30 Days to Leveraging Your Competition to Grow Your Online Business Fast

A beneficial and fun way to leverage your competition is to co-host an event together. If you have a really good idea that would be interesting to your competition’s audience (and yours) and set it all up, so all they have to do is say yes to your terms and conditions, you’re going to get a lot more people to say yes.    Divide the Work – You don’t have to do all the work, but the more work you do, the more promotion they’ll do. Ask them to do things you know they’re really good at or ask them...

One of the easiest ways to leverage your competition is to start an affiliate program. If you’re creating products and services for your joint or look-a-like audience, there is no reason not to set it up so that your competitors can promote you through your affiliate program. Make your affiliate program very effective, not only helping them make more money but helping you become a leader in the industry.    It’s Cost-Effective – It’s honestly not expensive to set up an affiliate program. You can use a network like Clickbank.net or JVZOO.com, or you can buy software such as Amember.com...

You can leverage your competition’s audience by finding ways to get promoted on your competition’s marketing channels. This idea does not involve going to your competition groups and creating spam content.  Instead, you’re going to want to produce a long-term strategy that allows you to engage with your competition while also engaging with their audience. These ideas will help you get promoted on your competition’s marketing channels.    Host a Competition – If you’re offering something amazing to the industry or the audience, you can host a competition about it. You can even turn compliments into a competition. For example,...

Now that you’ve had time to think about joint ventures, you may want to understand how to set up a joint venture with a competitor or competitors. While the best JVs share a division of labor – when you’re first getting started before you have a large following – the best way to do it is to identify who you want to form a JV with and then produce the idea in advance.  Then, at least at first, do most of the work before you invite the participants. Once you have one or two successful JVs under your belt, they’ll...

If you’ve taken a course or read something from your competitors that you found valuable that you wanted to use with your own audience? Why not ask them if you can white label the content or license the content for your use with your audience? This ask can be very tricky, but if you already have a good relationship with them, it won’t hurt to inquire.    White Label – This idea means that you keep the content exactly as it is, but you can add your logo to it while maintaining the integrity of the original creation. For example,...