12/10/2022
WHY ARE YOU CREATING YOUR OWN COMPETITION?
Other than being a marketer by profession, i am a very passionate event planner and decor artist , and because I equally find teaching or sharing information fulfilling, marketing isn’t the only Area of expertise I share information about!
About 3 or 4 months ago, I started sharing information about how one can start and run their own small decor business ( at a fee)
When I started this class, it’s something I thought would only happen once off , but after the first class was advertised for Ndola, some people in Kitwe showed interest, and so did some from Lusaka,
It was at this pointy that I realized the need for me to extend these classes to anyone who feels it’s something they would love to do, and ever since , we have had 5 classes done and some of these participants are now running their own small decor businesses..
One day, after one of these classes , a friend of mine was puzzled,
Why are you creating your own competition? Or could it be that you don’t share genuine information with your participants or is this just a way of making money for you?
As a beneficiary of a similar class in the field of marketing from Susan Mwenda-Mulongoti: Digital Entrepreneur , at some point i equally found myself asking, will she really give us information that can work? Why would she be creating her own competition?
Here is one important fact about businesses,
Others go in it to just make money for themselves, and others start from a point of passion, a passion to see a community that is progressing together, because we are only truly successful if more of us are successful,
But how will we succeed if we are showing others the srecrets?
Well that is where the power of choosing a target audience comes in,
Be it somone selling shoes, hair , clothes or plaiting hair, the truth is that one person can not service all the different types of customer segments there is, we all need clothes, but some of us need more affordable clothes, others need quality clothes, and others need expensive clothes for their status symbol.
To every business, there is an aspect of the location, proximity, and for a better chance of succeeding, carefully choosing a target audience, very rarely will you find every business player in an industry targeting the same audience,
The same way we have musicians with different genres which have specific people so are there different businesses with the same idea but different markets and audiences,
If one must teach you what they do, they will be failing in their duty if they do not atleast help you understand that there is alot of fish in the sea and that you just need to pick your type that aligns well with your unique being to avoid the unnecessary competition and increase your chances of succeeding!
Competition is healthy, and to some extent it does exist, but it is equally the one responsible for ensuring people improve their quality of service, in Oder to win a bigger share of the market,
For market environments in zambia, you will discover that certain segments of the market are not taken advantage of, because people want to compete when they could be in their own lane with no traffic at all!
So the next time you see somone teaching others a skill, be assured they either understand the market is large enough to share, and if they don’t, then they could possibly be creating their own competition, but how generous!🤭🥺
