I’m going to vent a little bit on this post - forgive me!
It seems that once a week someone on our team at Everon sends me a link to a managed service provider that is blatantly ripping off our website. Depending on how big of a foul they are committing, I will often send a nasty-gram email asking them to have some courtesy and make changes to their site to make it original.
In some cases (I’m not going to call anyone out in public…at least not yet!), it’s pretty embarassing how flagrant they are in their stealing of our content. We literally have had companies leave the Everon name and phone number on their site after they’ve copied our content! A competitor that was recently pointed out to me is just down the road from us and has taken a ton of our content, as well as used our tagline.
They say that imitation is the highest form of flattery, so I try not to get too upset. More importantly, the one thing that keeps me sleeping well at night is knowing this:
If you are copying our site to this degree, you will never have a competitive advantage over us!
Think about it. If you are literally following another company that close, you can’t possibly win against them in the long term. In order to win, you have to be original enough to stand out in the marketplace on your own merits. I’m not saying that you should be referencing and learning from your competitors - you absolutely should be - but you shouldn’t copy their branding.
The biggest struggle of people in our industry is sales and marketing - copying our website is proof. If you are in this position, recognize that you need to put a strong focus on developing your own sales and marketing skills so you can strengthen your business and your career.
MRC
