Dealing with a lot of competition

[Mr.PCFixer]

My business is fairly new I'm just about to hit my one year mark in October. I have had a tough first year because of the amount of computer repair companies in our area total 68! This is a list of registered businesses in the SWFL area that i service. I have made my business as unique as possible and my prices reflect lower than the current market.

I am struggling trying to find ways to gain more clientele in such an overcrowded market that I am in. Is anyone in a similar situation? can you give me some helpful advice? I am using a lot of SEO tactics and my web presence is very prominent. I am spending on average 250-300 a month on ad words. I do not like BNI for several reasons i wont get into here. But anything that could help would be appreciated thanks.

 

[PCX]

My business is fairly new I'm just about to hit my one year mark in October. I have had a tough first year because of the amount of computer repair companies in our area total 68! This is a list of registered businesses in the SWFL area that i service. I have made my business as unique as possible and my prices reflect lower than the current market.

I am struggling trying to find ways to gain more clientele in such an overcrowded market that I am in. Is anyone in a similar situation? can you give me some helpful advice? I am using a lot of SEO tactics and my web presence is very prominent. I am spending on average 250-300 a month on ad words. I do not like BNI for several reasons i wont get into here. But anything that could help would be appreciated thanks.

First, welcome to the forum. Second, now that you are a part of the forum, there is tons of information on this forum that will answer your questions if you just search. That said, the one piece of advice I will give you right off the bat is not to separate yourself from the competition by being the cheapest. It will not pay off in the end and it will only hurt your business. You will attract bad / cheap customers and then you will have to go through the headache of eliminating those customers once you do realize that you are way too cheap. Price wars are never good for competition or the overall health of your market. Learn to price your services appropriately now before its too late.

 

[cypress]

I just want to add that listening to PCX advise in past threads has helped me in the sense that pricing yourself lower than others doesn't help you. I struggled to find a range in price and even when I thought I was being fair I was still being told I charged too little. I decided to finally raise my rates to reflect what I am worth. Time = Money

Although, it did come with the price of weeding out and eliminating old clients that would want to take advantage of me. I learned that if they can't pay me what I am worth there are other places they can go to. Stick to your guns and in the end it will pay off.

Looking at your site, I actually find you to be quite low in the per Hour range when it comes to Residential.

 

[Mr.PCFixer]

Thanks for the quick replies i will take note of your suggestions. But because of the amount of competition where i live rates matter. Here's why the average age of the people who live in cape coral is over 60. They are usually limited on income and shop around for the best deal. I have put a lot of time and effort into my rates and have found what i charge to be the sweet spot. Thanks for the suggestions though i will do some more searching.

 

[callthatgirl]

Since you're new, I will give you a bit of advice.

Read this forum back as many pages as you can handle.
Take a lot of notes.

This forum is full of great advice and what worked for me was...

In person networking events, not BNI
LinkedIn
Speaking engagements
Business card massive handouts
Referrals

 

[carrcomp]

My business is fairly new I'm just about to hit my one year mark in October. I have had a tough first year because of the amount of computer repair companies in our area total 68! This is a list of registered businesses in the SWFL area that i service. I have made my business as unique as possible and my prices reflect lower than the current market.

I am struggling trying to find ways to gain more clientele in such an overcrowded market that I am in. Is anyone in a similar situation? can you give me some helpful advice? I am using a lot of SEO tactics and my web presence is very prominent. I am spending on average 250-300 a month on ad words. I do not like BNI for several reasons i wont get into here. But anything that could help would be appreciated thanks.

Join your local chamber.
Worked wonders for me.

 

[PCSupportGlasgow]

First year is always tough unless your lucky enough to get few big corporate clients right at the start.

As for 68 other IT companies i would be jumping for joy if was as low as that around here.

As others have said there is plenty of information in the forums.


PS your website is as ugly as hell and hosting it on free wix template and fully flash is doing you no favours.

 

[Martyn]

I've been going two years on my own and am just starting to really get work in and pay for itself. Forget about price, do a good job and spend time talking to people is my tip. Word of mouth is your best advertising and it takes time to filter out there. Be personable, i spent years in the corporate world so am used to talking to people. I also have invested a lot of money in getting to where I am now. I have everything set up so when it gets busy I can easily handle it. People say they started with nothing but as someone said unless you get lucky with businesses from the outset you have a long road to get where you want to be.

 

[rsarceno]

Just like what everyone else recommends. Read the forum front and back twice.

If you haven't done so, try diversification. I added full data recovery on my services. The initial investment is a bit much with an ROI in 1 year. I guess I was lucky because I start making profit in the 2 or 3 month. My DR machine is been running non-stop since I started. My next goal is to save all the profit on DR and invest on SSD recovery hardware.

You might want to add, Manages Service, Phones, games console or even tablets. You can also find someone are craigslist to outsource and make a little profit.

I try adwords and it didn't work as good as Organic. I read from a forum, that one of the SEO techniques is to created a script that click on adwords using proxy. This can easily be accomplish using Firefox Imacro.
Just my two cents.

 

[kwest]

What wa your investment for data recovery? What type of equipment is needed? As of now I just recover data of the files isn't damaged but files are missin or partition was deleted. I have been looking into harddrive repair to recover.

Just like what everyone else recommends. Read the forum front and back twice.

If you haven't done so, try diversification. I added full data recovery on my services. The initial investment is a bit much with an ROI in 1 year. I guess I was lucky because I start making profit in the 2 or 3 month. My DR machine is been running non-stop since I started. My next goal is to save all the profit on DR and invest on SSD recovery hardware.

You might want to add, Manages Service, Phones, games console or even tablets. You can also find someone are craigslist to outsource and make a little profit.

I try adwords and it didn't work as good as Organic. I read from a forum, that one of the SEO techniques is to created a script that click on adwords using proxy. This can easily be accomplish using Firefox Imacro.
Just my two cents.

 

[compnet]

Your website is close to unusable on my phone.. boxes were popping up once every 2-3 seconds for 15-20 seconds until the page finally loaded, to a lot of clutter and black and red stuff. I'd work on a cleaner, more concise, mobile friendly, professional looking site, especially if you're spending so much time and money on seo/adwords.

I'll second(or fifth) the pricing. Between the website and the pricing(if I was actually a potential client I'd hit back long before I got to pricing) it feels.... very "craigslisty"

We have about 10 shops within a couple blocks, the place across the street charges half what we do( and still a little more than you), more expensive or equally priced to everyone but the geek squad, and we're busier than all of them..

 

[PCX]

Your website is close to unusable on my phone.. boxes were popping up once every 2-3 seconds for 15-20 seconds until the page finally loaded, to a lot of clutter and black and red stuff. I'd work on a cleaner, more concise, mobile friendly, professional looking site, especially if you're spending so much time and money on seo/adwords.

I'll second(or fifth) the pricing. Between the website and the pricing(if I was actually a potential client I'd hit back long before I got to pricing) it feels.... very "craigslisty"

We have about 10 shops within a couple blocks, the place across the street charges half what we do( and still a little more than you), more expensive or equally priced to everyone but the geek squad, and we're busier than all of them..

Yeah, I gotta second this. For our area, we have quite a few shops, in fact, most are all on the same main strip as I am on. A few of these shops have been around for quite a while, but they have not changed their prices in years, so they are cheaper than they should be. Then there is one shop that is a few blocks down from us that is less than half of everyone else and just about every time I have drove by and looked in their shop (big glass windows in the front) they are dead and usually the guy is just sitting there playing on his laptop. Then there are a few other shops that are price more appropriately. Of all of these shops, there is perhaps one that has shown any type of growth over the years and none of them have more than one tech manning the shop.

We on the other hand are the most expensive shop in our area (priced appropriately though) and with 3 techs, we some times struggle to keep up with our work load. On top of that, we have actually grown and expanded our business several times and are further along than everyone else in just a few years of business.

Now, I am not saying you should start out as the most expensive, or even be the most expensive if it means ripping people off. What I am saying is that being the cheapest and not pricing your services appropriately will stunt your growth. When it comes time to raise your prices, you will not lose as much business as you might think, as long as you priced your self appropriately to begin with. Anyways, my point is this, raising your prices appropriately will not hurt your business as much as you might think. In fact, its essential to growing your business if you do it right.

 

[Rosco]

I've been going two years on my own and am just starting to really get work in and pay for itself. Forget about price, do a good job and spend time talking to people is my tip. Word of mouth is your best advertising and it takes time to filter out there. Be personable, i spent years in the corporate world so am used to talking to people. I also have invested a lot of money in getting to where I am now. I have everything set up so when it gets busy I can easily handle it. People say they started with nothing but as someone said unless you get lucky with businesses from the outset you have a long road to get where you want to be.

best advice i have heard... Doing a good job will get you more jobs it just takes time!

 

[Big Jim]

I opened my shop in small town (population ~7000)
There are 2 places here already.
1 has been established for years but has only recently gained any kind of recognition, I think mainly due to location (out of town on a very small industrial estate)
and the 2nd been here for 10ish years.

the 1st focuses more on business I beleive but I do hear good things about them, there site is very professional looking and I beleive they offer a wider range of services than us including website building.

The 2nd shop, I hear NOTHING but negative about these guys.
ripping people off
overcharging
stealing/swapping parts
lying
losing data
bad attitude

the list goes on,
They have possibly one of the worst looking websites I have seen, but I don't think people round here look at there/our website that often.

So I purposely priced myself lower than these guys as they massively overcharge people, I honestly do not know how they get any business with the way they operate.
I think my pricing is more inline with the 1st place I am just hoping my location gets me the recognition that I need. (we are next to a VERY busy traffic lighted junction and the shop is called Code Red Computers so the colour scheme is red and very eye catching)

 

[geeknz]

As others have said - don't compete on price. It is suicide!

It may seem crazy, but we've priced ourselves to be one of the more expensive outfits in our town, and we wear it like a badge of honor.

Most people don't even question it because they value the high quality service and workmanship, and the ones that start trying to haggle on price quickly move on when they see my blank stare.

In terms of edging out over your competition... I suggest that you continue to work on your 'unique selling proposition' until you have a really powerful one.

Not sure if you have heard about the Domino's example or not...
Way back when Tom Monaghan got into the pizza business he had a ton of very established competition in his local market.

He couldn't compete on price and he couldn't guarantee his pizzas were going to taste any better.

So what did he do?

He came up with a powerful unique selling point, which in fact was an irresistible guarantee:

"Fresh hot pizza delivered in 30 minutes or its free"

That one guarantee kick started Domino's and made it the powerhouse that it is today.

You need to come out with something so outrageous that it makes people stop and start running towards your business with cash in hand.

In our business - we are trialling a new offer which is a focal point of all of our advertising. We are offering a 110% money guarantee which states that if a customer is not completely satisfied with the work done we will refund every dollar and 10% extra for their troubles.

A few people have been concerned I'm going to be taken advantage of, but I believe most people aren't out to just rip people off, and all they ever wanted was their problem fixed.

But by giving such a powerful guarantee like that - you are taking all risk away from the customer. And if they are on the fence about who to chose, that will usually tip them over in your favour.