Cooperation instead of competition: moving forward with common goals

An important part of any marketing strategy is to identify your competitors. This is the only way to find out how your company can be uniquely positioned in the market - and how you can improve your products and services. In our capitalist world, many profit-oriented companies have developed strategies to beat the competition out of fear. The cola war between Coke and Pepsi is a classic example of how fear can play out. In this article, you'll learn why collaboration instead of competition leads to a more sustainable and healthy way to run your business.

The advantage of competitors

When I worked in the corporate world, I never understood the negative talk about our competitors. Competition is neither something evil nor something to be avoided or defeated. Competition is healthy and something to embrace and learn from.

If you are the first on the market and can build a valuable, growing customer base: congratulations! However, this is rarely the case and misleading. Even companies that have no direct competition have indirect competition. And will hopefully find this out if they are critical in developing their marketing strategy.

For example, let's look at an app that provides unique information, but still has a common goal with many other apps. You often see this in the health or wellness sector: some apps only offer meditations, while others offer affirmations and exercises alongside the meditations.

Developers of this new app may say: "Wonderful, I have no competition!" - but customers still have to decide which apps they want to download and actively use. After all, they don't have unlimited time, leisure or storage space. All these other related apps are your indirect competition.

What you can learn from your competitors

To run a successful business, you need to regularly review and optimize your marketing strategy. As an entrepreneur, you always want to have an advantage. So by learning more about your competition, you can improve your offering and define and optimize your USP (Unique Selling Proposition). The USP will most likely change over time, as your competition and customers are constantly changing. 

If you know your competitors' keywords, you can also improve your own SEO strategy. You don't want to use the same keywords as your competitors, who have a higher domain authority.

Fair warning

While it's important to learn as much as possible about your competition, it's even more important to focus on your own customers and not those of others. There are many customers. And in many cases, they are not just loyal to one brand. In other words, you will never see a person who only wears one fashion brand. Or only uses one cosmetics and personal care brand. Unless the person gets a big discount because they work there.

People love variety and want to combine, experiment and try out new things. That's why collaboration is so important. Especially if you want to bring about much-needed change in your industry as a social entrepreneur.

Cooperation instead of competition

Even in the non-profit sector - where the goals are the same - competition is fierce. Since every organization has its own agenda, I sometimes have the feeling that we will never achieve our goals.

What I would personally like to see is more unity in this world. There are too many divisions that lead to too many conflicts. Not only for the organizations themselves, but also for people who want to support a cause because there are too many options. The research alone is time-consuming and frustrating. 

One of the most important things I've learned as an entrepreneur committed to protecting animals and our environment is that I can't do it alone. And at the same time, I don't have to. Because I can work with others to make a bigger positive impact.

I work with my direct competition on various campaigns and projects. I even hired a copywriter friend of mine because I wanted her to edit and proofread my article before publishing it. She also hired me to proofread one of her articles. I also collaborated with my colleague and friend, an ethical marketing strategist, to create a video series about strengthening your marketing mindset. I'm part of her community Ethical Hour and have also held a workshop on ethical sales promotion for her audience. 

She could easily have presented this topic herself. But often people want to hear other perspectives - especially when it comes to marketing. Although we are similar in many ways and agree on non-manipulative marketing practices, we have different ideas. We complement each other, which also gives many people inspiration for their own business.

Working together will make your work easier and your campaigns more effective.

With the two colleagues who are my direct competitors, we know each other's strengths. We trust each other and have similar goals. So it only makes sense that we invest in each other and thus indirectly invest in animal welfare and environmental protection.

We do this not only to help our customers and promote our own business, but also to create a collaborative environment. Climate change doesn't affect just one nation - any more than a deadly zoonotic pandemic or an aggressive attack by aliens.

In such events, it doesn't matter what age, gender or nationality you are, or what religious beliefs, political opinions or sexual preferences you have - let alone which Stranger Things character you like best. None of that matters. The only thing that matters is that we unite!

How to work together

If you're looking for inspiration, here are a few examples of how you can work together:

• Organize and promote an event, e.g. a fundraising campaign for your common cause
• Organize an online seminar, a face-to-face conference, a workshop, etc.
• Organize and host a course that incorporates both skills.
• Become a guest speaker at various podcasts, events, panel discussions, etc. and offer to interview the other person on your channel.
• Organize a fashion show where you invite a few brands from fashion, make-up, shoes, accessories, etc. and get creative with mixing and matching.
• Involve your competitors and partners in your fundraising strategy.
• Run a campaign on a suitable national/international day that supports your company and your customers. For Raidboxes, for example, the International Data Center Day on March 23, 2023 would be suitable.
• Offer a paid or free resource that benefits the customers of both parties.
• Write a book or short series of articles together about how you work together to achieve your common goals because your cause is more important than your competitive differences.
• Offer discounts to each other's customers. This works well if they are indirect competitors and your products and services complement each other. Maybe there are some parallels, then you should promote how your customers can benefit from your partnership.
• Organize a competition where the prizes come from both companies to reduce costs for everyone and at the same time make the competition more attractive.

Collaborating with others, including your competitors, expands your customer base and increases brand awareness, positioning you as a thought leader and ultimately increasing your sales. It's a real win-win situation.

When you first approach someone to talk about a possible collaboration, it is very effective to give an example of a possible collaboration and at the same time explain that you are flexible when it comes to accepting proposals.

After looking at their work on websites, in articles, at events, etc. and finding the right contact, you can get a better idea of how they work and who they work with, so you can make a proposal for a suitable but unique collaboration. There are no rules on how, so be creative!