👀 Peeky Blinders - When to Look and When to Look Away The typo was intentional (this time) - 👀 it's a play on words when it comes to peeking over the proverbial fence of social media to see what our competition is up to.  🧠 But staring leads to comparing and that can be a real mind-trip wondering why the highlight reel of your nearest cookie competitor looks like they're one post away from being featured on Food Network while you're struggling for seasonal sales.  So - are we to blindly wander through business life pretending no one exists but us or are we supposed to have one eyeball glued to the screen pulling up our baking neighbor's latest Instagram post - monitoring each and every like?! 👐 The answer falls in the middle. There are times to peek and times to put on blinders. So what do when? Well - take a peek at this week's podcast for that. 🫣 When to Peek. Auditing your nearby competition to see what content buckets or posting strategies are working for them is a great way to reverse engineer marketing without having to reinvent (and retest) the wheels.  🧐 Are they re-investing in their community?  🙋 I see a ton of bakers make the "me, me, me, me, me, oh yeah, and me" mistake in marketing. A good marketing strategy creates value - then harvests from that investment after it's grown into a lead source. You'll see your competition making resource lists, charitable donations, and strategic partnerships - that's what you'll wanna peek at.  🧐 Are they creating valuable "about town" content?  I love this one. Posting endless cookies gets a little... stale (baking pun intended). But diversifying your content strategy can get people hooked. How? By posting things people want to know and read. 📃 Resource lists can include Valentine's Day preset dinner menus 💑, altered hours on Holidays, or a list of dog parks. Peek over at what your competition is trying out - see if it's working for them, then get to gettin' to it.  🧐 Are they partnering with other businesses? Strategic partnerships are a great way to get into a "corporate girly era" - and if your competition knows how to do that, it's worth takin' a look at who and what they're doing. 🤝 For example - Corrie partnered strategically with a local Botox injector to make cookies for a grand opening. In return, Corrie posted the Botox babe's cookie order to her local baking page linking back to both the FB, Insta, and website. 💉 You'll never guess who got a free Botox sesh outta it (hint: not me *wrinkles forehead*).  🕵️ There are times to peek - but it can't be to get yourself worked up - all hot and bothered. Nope - it's gotta be strategic. Facebook knows this too - it's got a built-in tool to take a peek without drowning in jealousy.  Facebook has a business tool built into Business Manager to help you peek over the fence - it's called Benchmarking. You can find it under business.facebook.com > insights > benchmarking. 😆 When to Blinder. Just as it's strategic to take a look at the competition - there are some things you need to intentionally block out or else they'll tend to derail your dough deals.  😌 No peeking at pricing. Pricing isn't something you can cheat on - because copying your baking neighbor's answers can lead to catastrophic pricing problems. You cannot operate at a loss - yes, even if they are. That's not your problem and it's not something you can compete on either.