How to Define your Competitive Advantage

Every business is different in one way or another, and standing out from the competition is a fundamental condition for success. If you are exactly the same as every other business in your niche, it’s unlikely you’re going to succeed. Defining your competitive advantage is an essential part of working out your business positioning, strategy and branding but it can be difficult to do.

While many businesses like to focus on what makes them unique, being different doesn’t always translate into more sales. As unique as your unique selling point might be, if it doesn’t give you an advantage over your competitors, or your customers can’t see the benefits, it’s probably not going to give you any competitive advantage.

Your competitive advantage is the reason that you are better than the other businesses in your industry, and the reason that your customers choose you over everyone else. Maybe you are faster, have a slick system that makes ordering easier, you’re more innovative or more customer focused than the rest. However unique your business might be, if you can’t define your competitive advantage you are going to have trouble marketing your business effectively against your competition.

What if you don’t know your competitive advantage?

When you’re setting up a new business, competitor analysis should be a crucial part of the process. By finding out what your competitors do well and what they might not be so great at, you can work out the best way to position yourself so that you can compete effectively with them.

If your competition is known for being unreliable, you can place reliability at the core of your brand promise and business values. This is great to get right at the very beginning, but even if you’ve been operating for a while it’s never too late to establish a clear competitive advantage.

If you’ve been established for a while you may be ticking along quite happily without having ever defined your competitive advantage. In this case you may need to do some research to find out why it is your customers choose you over the competition. Don’t be afraid to ask, or to conduct some market research to find out what your customers feel your competitive advantage is. You may find that the reason your customers choose you is very different from what you think.

Once you have defined your competitive advantage it can form the foundation of your marketing strategy. Knowing where you are positioned against other businesses in your industry makes it easier to tell people why they should choose you and attract the type of customers that will be most valuable for your business.

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https://www.nextmarketing.com.au/2015/10/small-business-marketing-how-to-define-your-competitive-advantage/

Jo Macdermott is a well known thought leader when it comes to all things Marketing. Jo is the Founder of Next Marketing, a well established Marketing Agency based in Melbourne. Jo is looking to connect with Marketing Managers, Entrepreneurs (in funded start ups) and Small and Medium Sized Businesses (with a marketing budget). Need some marketing help? With a commercial bent? Get in touch with Jo here