Copy-paste “marketing” is a pretty terrible thing. Definitely one of the worst approaches to use for your business.
Humans have used ideas, creations, and art to inspire our work for ages. It's great to use them to spark new and unique concepts. However, if you are blatantly copying your competitors, you're setting yourself for failure.
Content copying will eventually harm your marketing strategy and your business. The main reason you started your OWN business was to be unique, so your content has to be unique.
Remember that even close competitors in the same industry may not necessarily have the same audience.
Every small business should build their marketing strategy around their brand, and copying others makes you lose focus of your values and ideas. Note that it's essential to KNOW what your competitors are doing, but you should resist the temptation of taking the exact strategies and using them as your own.
Here are the reasons why copying your competitors is a recipe for disaster:
Focusing on the strategies of others will make you have trouble attracting your audience. If your copied idea is imposed on your brand or could be found elsewhere, it will not help you build trust with your customers.
Reposting screenshots from your competitors or super generic stock imagery will NOT make your content go viral.
Today, brands have to work with their marketing team to generate authentic and personalized content. You cannot “cheat the system" by posting an automated spammy post every 10 min. It will not work. It would be really silly to take advantage of someone's content and hope it will work for you. You have to reach out to your audience with the information they care about, need, or want.
Consumers aren't dumb; they will ALWAYS know you're doing copy-paste marketing. This shows your customers that you lack creativity and are unable to promote your business uniquely.
By using a real, carefully thought strategy, you'll be able to get valuable market data because you'll know what will work and not work for YOUR business. Therefore you'll be able to adjust your marketing strategy using your customer insights.
Remember, your customers want to work with you because of who you are.
