Business is fun, I love the idea of creating value and making a quid for my efforts, it puts a smile on my face and spring in my step )

BUT

It's a jungle out there - Neil Asher

Make no mistake, it’s a jungle out there.

Money is a powerful motivator for people and there are people who will do anything they can to get money, specifically YOUR money.

There are basically 2 ways to win at business;

1. Be the best in your niche

2. Be the only one in your niche

Normally I talk about being the best in your niche, however once you get started you’ll quickly learn that there are plenty of other businesses who’ll stop at nothing to be the only one in that niche too.

As I said it’s a jungle out there, to survive you have to know how to fight when you need to.

Over my 20 years of business experience I have occasionally had to defend my business against attacks from competitors, I have found the best form of defence is invariably to attack back.

So here’s 5 simple ways to kill your competition in your niche.

advertise negative keywords

Report to ASA:

The Advertising Standards Authority is a simple tried and test strategy to give your competitors a headache.

99% of ads that companies run fall foul of the ASA’s guidelines, a cursedly glance at their site shows the extent of the battles that are fought between the major companies on the UK high street:

http://www.asa.org.uk/ASA-action/Adjudications.aspx?date=12/21/2011#results

From Tesco, sainsburies and Asda doing battle to Phones 4U.

A confident at the ASA admitted that 99% of their complaints where instigated by rival companies, making the ASA unwilling pawns in the battle for your cash.

So, first port of call is to report your competitors to the ASA.

Adwords Strategy

Google adwords is brilliant, I am still amazed how much money can be made from it so easily, and how few business owners utilise this simple but effective tool.

For all it’s good it can be used for battle too, here’s how;

No matter how good your business is you will get complaints, no matter how well you handle complaints the sad truth is that some people would rather go online and bitch about your company than come and talk to you directly to solve it.

Naturally as a business owner you do everything you can to mitigate these complaints but once they’re online they’re their for all to see.

Why not help customers find the negative reviews that your competitor so desperately wants to hide.

A very effective strategy is to place google ads on buying keywords and direct the traffic to the bad reviews online.

nasty huh… works VERY well.

It’s brutal in the big bad business world and it’s best you prepare yourself for attack so you can defend should you find yourself on the receiving end.

Write negative reviews

Naturally the adwords strategy won’t work if there are no negative reviews online, so why not create your own and post them to sites dedicated to bitching and moaning.

This is highly unethical, however I know this happens all the time.

Tripadvisor is at the heart of a VERY BIG ongoing legal battle with a group of hotels that have been targeted with negative reviews by competitors, the hotels can do F.A to remove these false reviews and their business is slowly being killed as a result.

Think this couldn’t happen to you?

Think again.

Instant search

You’ve seen Googles latest innovation with instant search, this is when Google sees what you’re typing in the search box and offers suggestions as to what you might like to see.

This is VERY easy to game.

I have used this on numerous affiliate sites to get keywords that i want to appear to appear,

quite simply it is repetition and diverse users that make a keyword show up in instant search.

If you get 10 people in 10 different locations (a location as defined by IP address NOT physical location) to search for “(business name) rip off” then lo and behold that search terms comes up in instant search after a few iterations of doing this.

then it’s just a simple case of having the domain name and doing very very simple SEO on it and you’re done.

Register web sites

So the instant search naturally you’ll want to make sure you register www.(your own business name)ripoff.com ASAP

There are MANY more ways, however for the next level it starts getting pretty gnarly and I’d rather not share those strategies publicly as I use them more often than I care to admit.

However, what i’ve shared here will kill 95% of attackers.

This is not a pretty fluffy post, I hope I’ve shook you up a bit.

Business IS fun, it IS rewarding and I believe it is a great vehicle for personal growth. I would however be doing you a grave disservice if I didn’t give you the whole picture.

I don’t know anyone else who does, do you?

Neil

P.S I welcome your comments on this post.

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How can you almost guarantee the success of your business?

Wish You Were Here - Next Year You Could Be

Well you can’t guarantee business success, anyone that tells you that is lying.

But you can increase the odds of success, I use a 15 point process when i’m evaluating business ideas, I’m not going to share it all with you but I will share this 1 strategy which, for me, is the starting point of all the best businesses I’ve built.

One of my business rituals is to go to WH Smith every Tuesday Morning

I do this to get information on the market and a feel for the general feeling of people.

I’m also looking for ideas, specifically I’m looking for 2 things:

1. Products that I can sell in other countries

2. People I can build products around

Let me give you an example of those.

One of the products I sell very successfully throughout Europe is a hair care product. I first discovered this product on the front page of InStyle Magazine, it was also featured in Vogue and Cosmo (not on the cover) so I knew there was a great buzz about it and also knew that it would do well in the EU as I tend to find that most things do, with some tweaking and localisation.

It was touted as the best low budget product in the UK, I took the product to the EU, increased the price and started selling it.

We sell about 150 bottles a day.

I sell a “how to be an awesome fisherman” type newsletter to fishermen, my step dad John fishes as do my 2 brothers, but I find it boring as hell. But when I saw that the best fisherman in the world lives in Yorkshire I knew I had a product I could sell to the 2.5 million people who call themselves fishermen in the UK.

I contacted him and asked him if I could interview him and use his image etc and offered him a royalty on the newsletter, naturally he agreed. Free money and publicity is persuasive.

We started off with 50 subscribers and now have over 1000 and growing, plus of course fishermen are notoriously good at buying other stuff to catch bigger and bigger fish.

The opportunities are endless.

So my strategy is to find someone or something with massive amounts of credibility built into it. Then build a product around them.

My good mate Joff is very close to jancis robinson who is a very well respected wine writer for the Times. Massive credibility built in to her, people know and trust her.

Do you think that if Jancis recommend a wine it sells?

You better believe it does!

What if Jancis had a wine business do you think it would do well?

I do.

In fact I have an incredible idea for the wine industry that would turn that industry on it’s head, i figure £25,000 to test the business and if I’m right it’s a £100 million a year business. If you’re interested in the idea e-mail me.

but that’s a different story.

I saw a magazine dedicated to Dr Who, so I did some research, I found a guy who makes £500K 4 times a year by putting on a Dr Who convention, I then researched further, Dr Who is shown in 22 countries….

See, where I’m going with this?

Right now there are literally thousands of ideas waiting for you to take action to put them into existence, good ideas, some are a couple of grand a week ideas and others are blockbuster billionaire ideas.

They’re everywhere.

Let 2012 be the year you put one of those ideas into practice, there is no better time to be an entrepreneur.

The economy means there has never been a better reason to take control of your destiny.

Job security is a thing of the past.

State funded pensions are a joke.

The only way to free yourself is to educate yourself, and the fastest way to learn is to get started.

Don’t look for a business to start, look for a problem to solve.

When you’ve found your problem look for someone or something that can give you instant access to credibility and a market of buyers.

The easiest way to find that is an hour at WH Smiths looking through the magazines.

Neil

P.S last Thursday I asked if anyone wanted to see my SEO strategy that involved some naughty boobie pictures, I had 15 people put there hand up for that out of hundreds that read that post so I have to conclude no one wants to see it. If you do then go here and tell me:

P.P.S I’m in Australia! Nice and warm on Bondi Beach ) after months indoors, I am so white that I am actually reflective, so far I’ve stooped 3 yachts crashing into the beach

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Gary Halbert – Live at the System Seminar, San Francisco 2004 

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