We all do it. Keeping tabs on your industry is important to being a thought leader and showing others you know your stuff. You watch your competition closely, because you don’t want to fall behind on the trends. But, in staying up-to-date and trying to be ahead of the curve, one can sometimes become oversaturated with industry info and miss the larger picture.

You can find anything on the Internet these days. Nearly every type of industry you can imagine has some type of presence. Some are marketing themselves more successfully than others, and if you really want to get ahead of the curve, you need to look to other industries and arenas for ideas.

For sake of example, let me pretend I am a REALTOR® for a moment. A hot item in the real estate industry happens to be video tours. I know this as a real estate agent, because I check out the competition all the time. I might even have a marketing person creating tours for me and posting them on YouTube, Zillow and the local MLS already. Great! My clients probably love that, after all it’s a flashy way to show their home to large numbers of people. But, most of the other agents in my neighborhood are offering the same thing. How do I compete?

I might ask myself where else do I see videos on the web? When was the last time something caught my eye? Or, how have other companies gotten me to go and visit their web content? Then I remember, during a recent car purchase the dealership gave me a card with a QR code on it to easily access a page about the car I was interested in buying. I could scan it with my phone and easily access a mobile-friendly site that I could show my friends and family when I was deciding on my car. I found it really helpful.

Maybe I could use a QR code on postcards to help open house visitors get easy access to my video tours, or better yet provide them to buyer’s agents whose buyers are thinking about checking it out? This would make my videos more accessible than my competitions to buyers who are ready to move. By paying attention to the auto-industry, I got a great idea for my own business.

This is a habit all smart businesses should practice. I tell clients they should make note of marketing and technologies that they come across and appreciate, even if they don’t see how they could apply to them at the time. Keep a list. Visit it from time to time. This can really help you to keep your marketing and web presence fresh and it might just set you up to be unique in your industry.