a. Develop a competitive strategy
Your mission to survive or stay ahead of competition begins
with strategic planning. You must identify your competitor; spot out the
competitor’s strengths and weaknesses, and plan your strategy based on the
information gathered. Concentrate all your attacking effort on your
competitor’s weaknesses while avoiding and defending against the strengths.
“The best thing to invest in your business is your time. To
schedule, plan and use time effectively, know your turf and know your
objectives. Assess the obstacles and opportunities, then devise your
strategies.” – The Mafia Manager
When developing a competitive strategy, don’t do it alone,
do it together with your business team. Your competitive strategy must not only
include plans to defeat competition; it must also include plans that will
strengthen the business from the inside as well as on the outside.
b. Focus on a niche
“Don’t try to be all things to all people. Concentrate on
selling something unique that you know there is a need for, offer competitive pricing
and good customer service.” – Lilian Vernon
Most businesses try to be everything to everyone; don’t join
them. Find a niche market and serve that niche to the best of your effort. In
every industry, there’s an under served, abandoned niche that the big
corporations considers too small to be served. It’s up to you to find such
niche and focus your entire marketing effort on it. Don’t spread your effort,
concentrate and don’t try to be everything to everyone; be something to
someone.
“And here is the prime condition of success, the great
secret. Concentrate your energy, thoughts and capital exclusively upon the
business in which you are engaged in. Having begun in one line, resolve to
fight it out on that line; to lead in it. Adopt every improvement, have the
best machinery and know the most about it.” – Andrew Carnegie
Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic was able to breakthrough
because it focused on business men and students while British Airways strives
to serve everyone. Facebook was able to breakthrough because it focused on
youths. So if you are going to stay ahead of competition; then get focus.
c. Strive to be unique
What sets your business apart from the competition? What
does your business name or product stand for in the heart of your customers?
What’s your unique selling proposition? If you haven’t given these questions a
thought, then I think you are making a grave mistake because creating a unique
selling proposition begins with you answering these questions. To outsmart your
competitors, you need to be unique. You need to find your strength, work on it
and broadcast it to the world.
As an illustration, Aliko Dangote set his company apart with
speedy delivery and uniform price. Wal-Mart became a brand with its unique
pricing strategy; Apple became a brand with innovation and Virgin Atlantic grew
because it offered first class service to an ignored niche; “business people
and students.” So if your business is going to stay relevant in the
marketplace; then you need to be unique.
d. Build a brand for your business
The fourth small business marketing strategies to
outsmarting your competition is to build a brand for your business. You may say
you don’t have the huge marketing budget of the big corporations but you can
build a brand in your own little way.
“If you are not a brand, you are a commodity.” – Robert
Kiyosaki
By emphasizing on quality, striving to fulfill your brand
promise and working on your overall brand image; you can build a strong brand
image for your business. Most of the popular brands in the world today were
smaller brands of yesterday. If you consistently invest in building a brand for
your business; you’ll stay ahead of competition.
“To succeed in business, you must build a brand and never
destroy it. One competitive advantage I had when I ventured into manufacturing
was my brand “Dangote,” which I diligently built in the course of my trading
commodities.” – Aliko Dangote
e. Focus on the Customer
“A business absolutely devoted to service will have one
worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.” – Henry Ford
In guerrilla marketing key point number two, I emphasized
the need to focus on a niche. Now what’s that niche made up of? A niche is a
group of people with a common interest. Most businesses are so obsessed with
keeping an eye on the competition that they ignore the main asset of their
business which is the customer.
“Business is not just doing deals; business is having great
products, doing great engineering and providing tremendous service to
customers. Finally, business is a cobweb of human relationship.” – Henry Ross
Perot
Now does that mean you should take your eye off competition?
My answer is no but do it with moderation. You focus should rather be how to
serve the customers more efficiently; your utmost focus should be to give the
customer maximum satisfaction.
“What is good for our customers is also in the long run good
for us.” – Ingvar Kamprad
f. Connect with customers emotionally
All businesses try to communicate with the customers but not
all connect with the customers. Your guerrilla marketing tactic here should be
to discover your customer’s soft spot and touch them right on that spot. One
question on the mind of all your potential customers is “Wii-FM,” meaning “what
is in for me.”
“Stop talking about your products and services. Customers
don’t care about products and services, they care about themselves.” – David
Meerman Scott
The answer to the “Wii-FM” question is the key to
successfully connecting with your customers emotionally. Connecting with your
customers entails knowing your customer’s need and touching them at the point
of that need. If you can successfully do this; you have nothing to fear about
competition.
“Spend a lot of time talking to customers face to face .You
will be amazed at how many companies don’t listen to their customers.” – Henry
Ross Perot
g. Strive to achieve quality
The seventh guerrilla marketing to outsmarting competition
is to give your customers the best of service. You must insist on quality and
make quality a standard in your business. Insistence on quality at an
affordable rate can set you apart from competition.
“Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an
environment where excellence is expected.” – Steve Jobs
Never trade quantity and cheapness over quality because it’s
going to back fire. Debbi Fields, Henry Ford and Michael Dell are successful
entrepreneurs that carved a niche for themselves because of their insistence on
quality. Debbi Fields extraordinary insistence on quality led to the initiation
of their company’s motto “Good enough never is.”
“Good enough never is. Set your standards so high that even
the flaws are considered excellent.” – Debbi Fields
h. Concentrate on innovation
“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”
– Steve Jobs
How did Apple become one of the most respected companies in
the world? They made it through innovation. Concentrating on innovation was
Apple’s overall strategy to stay competitive in the market place. Apple’s
strategy was to stay competitive by providing the customers with constant
innovative products that solves basic problems and all Apple’s guerrilla
marketing tactics revolved around that strategy. So if constant innovation
helped Apple stay in the game; why shouldn’t it do the same for your business?
“Pretty much, Apple and Dell are the only ones in this
industry making money. They make it by being Wal-Mart, we make it by
innovation.” – Steve Jobs
Being innovative doesn’t mean spending millions of dollars
in research and inventions; being innovative simply means being willing to try
out new products and techniques to improve the value of your offered services.
Being innovative is simply searching outside the box for faster solutions to
people’s problems so you can choose to compete with innovation or not, but know
that a company driven by innovation will always stay ahead of the pack.
