How to Increase Your Brand’s Competitive Advantage
From price and packaging to culture and learning, a perpetual objective for your firm should be gaining a competitive advantage. You need to make sure that your business is seen, and you need to make sure that it is seen successfully. This is something that you need to put a lot of thought into, if you do it wrong, then it could cost you business, but if you do it right, then you won’t have to worry about a thing. But you need to make sure that you can create positive brand awareness, as well as creating a successful product that is better than your competitors. Brand awareness is so crucial these days, most customers will want to be familiar with a brand before they purchase from them. In order to enhance your business awareness, you could consider stepping up your business marketing to ensure that more people become familiar with your services or products. For business owners who have no experience in building a brand, this can be difficult. Luckily though, there are many online resources that can help businesses build a strong brand. Some companies might benefit from reading the News on German Website “Unternehmen Heute”, for example, to ensure that their business stands out and attracts more customers. That should help more brands to develop a competitive advantage. Whilst there are multiple ways to develop a brand’s visibility, one of the best ways to do this is by creating an Instagram page. Social media channels, like Instagram, are used daily by millions of people. This means that businesses would have a much bigger chance of increasing their sales and growing by using social media. They could even consider using a hashtag generator for instagram. By using hashtags on their posts, businesses can increase their chances of being seen on the Instagram explore page. This should increase their visibility, giving them more of an advantage over competitors. With an online audience, businesses can experience growth much quicker than those without social media presence. There are also other ways of branding too.
You can easily make use of something like these Custom Water bottles to help your business raise awareness. It’s not just about the item though, you need to consider what your unique selling point is, what will bring people into your business, what will make them happy?
Your organization’s successful differentiation from competitors in the market influences buying decisions. If your business is unique enough, you can attract your competitors’ customers.
If you don’t have a unique selling position (USP), you should start thinking of how you can become unique enough that customers find useful. From packaging and pricing to customer service post-sales support, your differentiation should be well-researched and deliberate. You can then use that research towards your marketing, be it via seo services or other methods.
How to Identify Your Unique Selling Position
The first step in positioning your product, is getting to know your competitors. What do they offer compared to others and you.
Research:
- Price
- Promotion
- Advertising
- Location
- USP
- Influence
- Brand tone
- Brand awareness
- Social Media
- Reviews
From these things, create a visual:
You can draw up the following:
- A list of pros and cons
- A product positioning map using 4 common traits of your competitors
- Competitor matrix with strengths and weaknesses
- Customer impressions
The more research and visuals you create, the clearer your competition will be-and the clearer the gap that exists in the market that you can fill as a USP.
Whether it’s higher quality, lower pricing, unparalleled customer service or a different voice, identifying where opportunities exist is half the battle.
How to Position Your Product for a Competitive Advantage
To effectively position your product, you must identify useful differences in your product and clearly communicate those differences to your potential buyers.
The 4 Ps is a combination of tactical marketing tools that force you to simplify and define your product so you can effectively communicate it to customers in the most effective and rewarding manner.
The 4 Ps of Marketing
Product: How clearly is it defined? What is it? How do you communicate it to your audience? From the label to the look-does it represent your definition and your brand?
Price: Does your pricing decision include research on supply, demand, strategy and profit margins? Is it competitive? If not competitive, does it reflect benefits your market will receive over your competitor’s product?
Promotion: Now that you’ve defined your product and its price, determine the most effective channels to promote it. Is it email marketing, social mediate marketing, radio, video, print? Likely it will be a combination of some or more, but make sure each decision is tied to your market research. Speak to your customer via the channels that will pay off.
Place: With the internet, place has come to include online. But don’t forget ideal brick and mortar locations – if it makes sense to your business. Are you a gym offering supplements? Then the gym is likely a better place to convert consumers than online. Do both, but prioritize and budget.
Now that you have the basics, you have some homework to do. If you’re already an established brand, revisiting the 4 Ps and competitor review won’t hurt. You might find new opportunities that put your product in an even better position in the market.
Creating a Competitive Advantage is an Investment
As delineated, creating a USP for your product is an investment in time and money. But this investment is certain to pay off when you establish a successful competitive advantage.
Want to know how to strengthen your product position? Read our next article “How to Strengthen Product Positioning”
Overwhelmed? Super Health Center offers brand evaluation and growth as part of its services. Find out what we can do for you and reach out today.