As the saying goes in today’s business and marketing worlds – ‘stand still and you will fall behind the competition’. Companies need to innovate to stay ahead in their industries.
A common affliction especially with larger corporations is complacency and believing they have reached the summit but in today’s dynamic business landscape, you have to stay nimble and prepared to change just to survive. Nokia and Blackberry were 2 dominant mobile manufacturers who have fallen by the wayside precisely because of complacency and being overtaken by competition.
Everything starts with identifying and building on your competitive advantages. After all, it is these core competencies that will mark you out from rival companies and help customers choose you over them. Once you have a clear idea of your core capabilities, you can instantly know if a certain change is out of your sphere or not. In this article, we will look at proven strategies for progressing your business so you can leave the competition in your trail.
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A Clear Online Presence
A big part of that messaging is your company website and all the social media platforms that represent your brand online. They give you an important channel to increase awareness for your brand and also a way for customers to reach you and give you feedback. If you are unsure how to design your site or how you want it to look, check out some web design inspiration to give you some ideas to help make your brand stand out from the competition. Nowadays, any brand without a good online presence will quickly be forgotten and fall behind the competition.
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Identifying Core Competencies and USPs
Your business has to be built on unique selling points that differentiate you from the competition. Think Etoro for social trading, sharing ideas and following top traders to benefit from their expertise, or Tiffany engagement rings that evoke the romance of Hollywood. They may not have the best quality diamonds, but each one is ethically sourced and traceable. Keep these unique differentiators at the heart of all your activity and company values. It gives you clear direction and the messaging that you can convey to customers that competitors cannot easily imitate.
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Creating a Community
If your messaging and brand story can truly move people, you can build the foundations of a community. Community marketing is probably the most formidable strategy for building longevity in your sales. Think 3Doodler Pens who engage with customers for craft projects and schools for education workshops. Each group creates a community that helps each other, follows and promotes the brand fervently and stops new brands from taking that market share.
By building a community for your customers, employees and even suppliers to interact, you have a group that becomes ambassadors for your brand with much more loyalty and buy-in than customers acquired through lower prices or marketing gimmicks.
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Recruiting the Best Talent
The teams that run your business are the most important agents for growth, so ensure you hire the best you can afford. It doesn’t mean the most creative or only hiring Ivy League Graduates. It means having a robust recruitment process that chooses the best candidates for the role in the team. Use personality profiling and psychometric tests like Myers-Briggs and DISC to give you detailed insights into each candidate and how they would fit into and balance your existing team.
An analytical type would be great as finance staff but not effective in your sales team or marketing department. Getting the wrong people is always more damaging and time-consuming than spending extra time and effort on getting the best talent you can find.
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Product Development
Every company wants an evergreen product, one that can be a bestseller for years and once in a while you do stumble upon them. But normally your range needs to grow over time as consumer tastes change or competitor products encroach. Consistent and well-marketed product development is key to growing your customer base and keeping loyal customers coming back.
They don’t have to be complete reinventions of a product but refreshes or upgrades to best sellers can work just as well. Look at the Volkswagen Golf now in it is 7th generation of a model that the manufacturer first rolled off its production lines in 1974. It remains as popular today as it did then and with only cosmetic or minor changes between each generation.
In Summary
Getting to the summit of your industry is a challenge but staying there is even harder. There are clear strategies you can use to stay ahead and avoid a similar fate to companies like Nokia, Woolworths or Fujitsu. Identify what your company does well and has that is unique, build on this and communicate it to your customers but do not stand still. Spend plenty of resources on innovating that competency and the product range available to customers. And build a team that can deliver exceptional results and embrace change because that is the one constant when it comes to business.
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