NEWS
Competitors React – Build a Sustainable Competitive Advantage
As a small business owner, you might have discovered the best way to reach your customers or the most profitable positioning strategy or the most cost-effective way to reach your target market. In other words, you might have one or a set of marketing strategies that is rather groundbreaking, this will most likely get the attention of your competitors.
In this article, we are going to discuss your current or potential competitors, and how they react to your strategies and decisions.
Regardless of the size of your business, if you have a successful business model or a piece of innovation, competitors tend to react by copying and / or using the idea to better cater to their customers. As small business marketing consultants, we recommend building Sustainable Competitive Advantage (SCAs).
What are SCAs?
Simply put, SCAs are barriers to prevent or limit competitive attacks by building stong positioning for a long-term success. Being SCA focused would mean that your small business can generate more customer value than your competition who are also offering the same products or services.
Three major characteristics of SCAs:
1. Ensure that your customers care about the SCAs
As simple as it sounds, it is absolutely crucial to satisfy customer needs and wants. In other words, as a small business owner, it is important to develop an SCA that your customers want and care about. However, it is worth noting that an SCA might go obsolete in the future. Blockbuster, for example, used to dominate the video rental industry. Their SCA being their store locations and their brand overall. Then came Netflix, offering a different set of values and benefits to their customers, that better met user needs. This included no late fees, broad range of movies and shows, easy to access etc.
Thus, the SCAs must be customer focused. This is because SCAs are only effective when your customers care about them. In order to keep up with the changes, innovation is the cornerstone to constantly meet users’ evolving needs and wants.
2. Offer a relative advantage by doing things better than your competitors
Our dedicated Senior Marketing Consultants based in Sydney and Brisbane will help you understand your competition, and how they (competitors) are serving their customers. In accordance with that, they will further assist you to offer a relative advantage by doing things better than your competitors, which is in line with building a successful SCA.
3. The SCAs are difficult to replicate
Being a first mover in a particular sector comes with plenty of advantages. But it doesn’t necessarily create any barriers for entry for your potential competitors. Building an SCA will make it almost impossible to replicate your business model or offerings by later entrants. Creating customer relationships by establishing your brand has proven to be one of the most successful ways to prevent duplication. This is because brand images reside in your customers’ minds, and it’s the emotional connection to your brand that is almost impossible to replicate.
As experienced marketing consultants for small businesses, we thrive in helping you to find new and different ways to tackle your business challenges. Whether you are small business owner who is looking to take your first steps in marketing your business or someone who has already done some marketing, and know what you want. Our dedicated Senior Marketing Consultants can help you in every way possible. Learn more about us and what we do.
