What’s My Competitor Doing?
This blog post shares fresh ideas to help you identify and take action against your competitors, including:
- How do I know if my competitor is risky?
- What’s their differentiated value proposition?
- Where are they expanding their business?
- What are they doing wrong?
- And finally, how can I take advantage of these findings and my competitor’s weaknesses.
Write an introduction to a blog post that includes the following information. The article is titled "How to Use Your Strength as a Competitive Advantage".
You have great ideas for something new—perhaps even something revolutionary. This is precisely the time to explore into the idea. But you don’t want to do something for no reason. You want to get in front of your idea and be able to show it off. You need a way to do this that doesn’t seem forced or forced.
This is when you need a competitive advantage—a way of standing out from the crowd, which allows you to clearly communicate what your idea is, at the same time as giving your audience an easy way into appreciating and understanding it. In fact, comprehending your concept before you have customers might save you years of work and millions of dollars, but getting that initial inspiration can still be very difficult for all but the most experienced entrepreneurs.
In this article, we’re going to talk about how to find your competitive advantage through your strengths. Whether they are quantitative (data) or qualitative (people), you want to identify the special quality that will help you stand out from the crowd and differentiate yourself from your competitors.
Step 1: What is my strength?
Fortunately, there are a number of "standard" advantages that are used by most of the leading companies around the world. Here are some:
Knowledge-based: Research & Development, Customer Service, Innovation… all have their strengths in finding new ideas and bringing those ideas into reality.
Bargaining power : This can come in the form of customer loyalty, or simply having a large customer base.
Information: Finance, Marketing, Operations and Sales all have their strengths in knowing the market and being able to communicate that knowledge to customers.
Access: Although this is a bit different from an advantage as you’re not necessarily taking something away from other companies, you still have a lot of value to offer if you're a company that sells services 'on-demand'. For example, Uber gives its customers access to private cars at one location.
Knowledge-based: Research & Development , Customer Service , Innovation… all have their strengths in finding new ideas and bringing those ideas into reality .
Bargaining power : This can come in the form of customer loyalty, or simply having a large customer base .
Information: Finance , Marketing , Operations, and Sales all have their strengths in knowing the market and being able to communicate that knowledge to customers .
Access: Although this is a bit different from an advantage as you’re not necessarily taking something away from other companies, you still have a lot of value to offer if you're a company that sells services 'on-demand'. For example, Uber gives its customers access to private cars at one location.
Step 2: Identify your competitors' strengths and weaknesses
You’ve identified your own strengths. But how can you tell which of your competitors have similar advantages?
First, you want to be able to understand everything about their offering—from the product or service that they sell, how they sell it and everything in between.
Next, you want to identify what their competitive advantage is. What allows them to stand out from the crowd? This is where you’ll be able to find which of your competitors are making a lot of money for themselves by using their strengths.
Step 3: Check out your competitors' strengths
Now that you've identified your competitive advantage, the next step is to find a way of capitalizing on these strengths. In other words, how can you make something better than what they're doing? Often you'll be able to use all of the places that you found your competitors' strengths. This includes:
- Doing this as fast as possible. The more quickly you can do this, the more effective it will be. Your customers won't mind waiting two weeks for some service even if it's being offered by a competitor that can offer it within hours.
- Doing this in a new and effective way . If you can offer the same thing as a competitor but do it in a new way, it will make you stand out.
- Doing this at lower cost. There are two ways to do this: 1) Reduce your cost of production and 2) Improve your efficiency and reduce turnover. This is relatively easy to check by looking at your competitors' costs and comparing them with your own.
- Doing this with higher quality . There are two ways to do this: 1) Improve on the quality of your product or service or 2) Improve on the relevance of your offering so that it stands out from everyone else.
Use these strengths to your advantage. Find a way to make it a strength of your own. Do this before you launch your product or service, and you'll find that it's much easier to launch at a time that is most beneficial for you—and since you have an advantage up on the competition, this will make it easier than ever for you to find customers.
- Doing this as fast as possible . The more quickly you can do this , the more effective it will be. Your customers won't mind waiting two weeks for some service even if it's being offered by a competitor that can offer it within hours. - Doing this in a new and effective way . If you can offer the same thing as a competitor but do it in a new way , it will make you stand out. - Doing this at lower cost . There are two ways to do this: 1) Reduce your cost of production and 2) Improve your efficiency and reduce turnover . This is relatively easy to check by looking at your competitors' costs and comparing them with your own. - Doing this with higher quality . There are two ways to do this: 1) Improve on the quality of your product or service or 2) Improve on the relevance of your offering so that it stands out from everyone else.
Use these strengths to your advantage. Find a way to make it a strength of your own.
Conclusion
So what are you waiting for?
As you can see, finding your competitive advantage is a crucial step for any business. By capitalizing on the strengths of your competitors, you'll make yourself stand out from them and make it easier to find customers. In other words, your goal is to be able to outperform your competitors by taking advantage of their weaknesses. Shouldn't this be the goal for every business? Feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions! Thanks!
By Sam Kogan From https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/243376 http://www.entrepreneur.