Competitive Advantage or How to Rock the Market Like a Hurricane

Find out how to give your business an edge and speed down the road to success

Hello ladies and gents! I am glad to be able to get back to you for our weekly dose of marketing tips and tricks that can help your business success. Today, I have prepared a special marketing menu and our main course will be an exotic dish, which I call competitive advantage. It might sound a bit abstract, but once you taste it, you will not be able to relinquish its savor. But don’t let me keep you starving and let’s move on to the main entry.

Very often, companies both big and small lack a certain edge that can push them forward. Indeed, they simply do not have that little something extra that differentiates them from their competitors and it makes them stand apart from the crowd of industrial look a-likes. In a marketer’s language, those companies lack the so called competitive advantage.

Before we get into the nitty-gritty of this somehow elusive concept, we have to define the very term. In a nutshell, competitive advantage is an advantage over competitors gained by offering people a greater value. Nothing more, nothing less. Some people claim that your need to be unique and you should be a pioneer who discovers and cultivates a business terra incognita in order to obtain this kind of magic power. I tend to disagree with them.

Over the years, I came to understand that there are multiple ways to add value to the lives of people. Think about the indelible mark that Apple has left in the sphere of technology by offering quality products. You can also learn a few tricks from Dell, which revolutionized the PC market by allowing people to customize their laptops. Even the guys at the local bakery add certain value to the life of a customer by preparing his or her freshly baked muffins like no other. The moral of this story is that you do not have to be highly innovative or creative. You just need to find that one thing that makes the lives of your customers easier and turn it into your competitive advantage that sets you apart from the myriads of companies in your industry and allows you to surpass them all.

Defining your competitive advantage sounds like a Herculean task. Indeed, if all of us knew how to do it, the world would be abounding with value-added services or products. Hence, this takes a bit of time and it involves a bit of research and a bit of thinking. In order to figure out how to go through this process, I advise you to take the following steps:

• Think about the specific industry you are in from a consumer perspective;
• Appraise the recent industrial innovations and figure out how they impact your business and your competitiveness (are you getting obsolete, is your business hip, is there a new opportunity that arises due to a recent technological change, etc.);
• Spend some time studying your competitors and make sure you research them as thoroughly as possible! We already discussed some business intelligence MOs, so refresh your memory and get busy! Try to figure out what their competitive advantage is and why they attract customers. Some of them might not have one, which is not unusual. Indeed, do not let the shiny layer of “we are the best”, or “we are the most unique company in the history of mankind and we boast with our 100% consumer satisfaction rate” fool you. Those guys have nothing to offer to the world. Look for the real value in there. Yet, look for it carefully because as Antoine de Saint-Exupery once said, the essential is invisible to the eyes. So turn your brains on and think;

  

• Put yourself in your customers' shoes and try to figure out what they find really helpful. Ask yourselves what features of a product make your life much simpler and more pleasant, or how a service should function. If you cannot come up with anything or you do not feel inspired, ask your friends to help you out! You can always ask your Twitter followers or your Facebook friends what they think about that. You can start a discussion on LinkedIn or post the question there. You can even make a survey and ask friends or visitors to take it. People will provide you with incredible insights! Asking your social media buddies to help you out with this one is the instant and free alternative to organizing focus groups (wow traditional marketing is really on its knees!)
• Once you figure out what the competitive advantages of your rivals are and you finally come up with a great idea how to make your products or services better and break away from the industry crowd, sit down, take a deep breath, and write that concept of yours down. Great job. You have just given your business the edge it was lacking! Now you have your competitive advantage in place.

Now you can rejoice and pat yourself on the shoulder. You deserve it. But do not get too excited as it is a business jungle out there. Stay tuned for our next survival lesson on custom solutions for businesses! In the mean time, keep up with your comments and hurry up and subscribe to our rock steady feed, follow us on Twitter or join us on Facebook if you still have not done so!