Rivals in business are a tricky thing to handle. On one hand, you can’t afford to take your eyes off them in case they disrupt your market. On the other hand, if you watch them too closely, it becomes all too easy to simply play catch up to the point your business becomes almost identical. It’s time to solve the problem and cut through the knot rather than trying to untie it. It’s time to stop being a rival.
Make It Pitch Perfect
You have to find the unique selling point of your product or service and you have to make sure that it blows your competitors out of the water. The best way to do this is to carefully study their brand and their expressed values. Rather than just copying what works, however, you have to find the weaknesses in it and turn them into a strength.
If there’s a market they’re not serving, you might want to focus primarily on them. If there’s an element of customer service they’re not fulfilling, you can use it. It goes for the basics of the branding, too. Use packaging research to make sure you have the edge, visually. Invest in video marketing if you noticed your competitors haven’t tapped into the medium yet. Be ruthless in making the offer that they’re not, both in content and form.
Attract The Very Best
A great product or service is made by great people. If you want to be competitive, you have to hire competitive, too. Focus on employing the very best. You can do this by getting more active in your hiring and making your work environment more attractive, more fun, and more exciting.
Rather than just throwing out advertisements, spend your time marketing and getting to know the talent that’s out there trying to make a name for themselves. Then ensure you have the workplace and the company culture to make it more appealing to them.
Know Thy Market
Market research isn’t enough. You have to be close to your market on a day-to-day basis. This means, for instance, a thoroughly equipped customer support team as well as a social media coordinator whose entire job role is to represent your brand within the community. It also means frequent operations gathering feedback.
Whether or not you implement the feedback you get (and you should probably implement some of it) the customer-driven focus is enough to make people feel like they’re truly valued by a brand. That’s what turns a customer into a brand loyalist.
Stay On The Treadmill
Social media is just one example of the technology arms race that has decided some of the winners and losers in the past two decades. Those who adopted it early succeeded over those who couldn’t get online quick enough. Your business has to be technologically relevant to give it every edge over the competitors. This is true whether it’s the technology you offer or use to make products, to market, or simply more advanced tools you use to offer services a cut above them.
If you truly want to excel beyond all the competition, it’s essential you stay hungry. You can’t afford to be content with your business as it is. That’s how you begin to stagnate, giving room for another innovator to make you irrelevant.