Every business needs to be able to identify its competitive advantages; herein lie the real reasons that customers should choose to do business with you. Here are five places to look to find competitive advantages that can help you win.
Cultivate Competitive Advantages that Can Help You Win
The more competitive your industry, the more likely it is you are looking for ways to identify and cultivate competitive advantages that can give your business the edge. Here are five places to look to find competitive advantages inside your organization that can help you win.
What are Competitive Advantages?
A competitive advantage is a condition which enables a company to operate in a more efficient or otherwise higher-quality manner than the companies it competes with, and which results in benefits accruing to that company. (Investorwords.com)
What types of benefits will Competitive Advantages produce?
Some of the types of benefits an organization with a competitive advantage might enjoy would be results such as generating greater sales, increasing profit margins, reducing costs and expenses, or attracting or retaining more customers than its competition.
All Competitive Advantages are not created equal.
Ideally, you should be looking to develop competitive advantages that cannot be easily replicated; the benefits of a competitive advantage will only last as long as the advantage exists.
This is referred to as sustainability – the extent to which a competitive advantage is short-lived or sustainable over time. For instance, if your landlord were to give you 3 free months of rent, you would have a short-term competitive advantage due to reduced overhead. If you just paid off your building, you may have a sustainable competitive advantage over all competitors who still have lease, rent or mortgage costs.
Likewise, you may develop a competitive advantage by improving the customer experience in a way that is easy for competitors to emulate, or your brand’s experience may be so unique that it will remain a competitive advantage for a long time.
5 Places Your Competitive Advantages Might Be Hiding in Plain Sight
Deal-Breakers
If you can identify common causes of customer churn (also referred to as customer attrition or turnover) within you organization, you may be able to (a) remedy the situation and stop the churn while simultaneously (b) establishing a new competitive advantage — provided competitors lose customers to the same causes.
Deal-Makers
Ask customers what made them choose to do business with you vs. the other organizations they could have selected. Likewise, check in with prospects that failed to convert to ask about the factors that landed them with your competitors.
Getting inside the minds of your customers and prospects — especially those you feel represent your ideal client types – can provide you with insights about what is really most important to them (vs. the assumptions in your marketing strategy).
Employee Specialties
Your organization may be fortunate enough to have attracted employees with truly unique skillsets, experience or education. You may be able to translate an individual employee’s specialty or passion into a competitive advantage that will be difficult for competitors to match.
Associations
Competitive advantages aren’t only about what your business is doing right (or wrong). You may also be able to cultivate competitive advantages by choosing the right organizations to partner with for events and cross-marketing, or those causes you choose to support through volunteer work, raising awareness and charitable donations.
Last year we reported on a 2013 study which found that consumers want to reward businesses based on corporate social responsibility (or CSR) :
- 95% have a more positive (brand) image of the company
- 94% are more likely to trust the company
- 93% would be more loyal to the company
- 91% would switch brands to one associated with a good cause
- 87% say CSR is a consideration when deciding where to shop
- 85% say CSR influences what services or products they recommend to others
Products and Services
Perhaps an obvious hiding spot for a competitive advantage; however, you may not be actively promoting your business based on specific uniqueness of your products or services (whether it’s a unique product or service in and of itself or unique benefits or features in your products or services vs. competitors). Don’t assume that customers can pinpoint how your products or services are superior to those of competitors; spell it out!
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