Career Development, Intellectual Property

Unveiling Your Edge: Analyzing Your Competitive Advantage for Business Success

Man standing on top of a mountain, holding a flag.

In business, your competitive advantage is everything! It is what makes you stand out for your clients when they have many businesses to choose from for the same types of products or services. And your competitive advantage is the thing that keeps them coming back to you because they can’t get what you deliver anywhere else. This is why unveiling your edge is so important for the success of your business. 

What is competitive advantage?

In business, your competitive advantage is what separates you from your competitors. It is the attribute or attributes that help you outperform them. Your competitive advantage can be a process that helps you do something faster or better, a patented product, your style of customer service, and so on. These factors create intellectual property that you want to identify, protect and leverage.

Identifying your competitive edge is a key factor for business growth because it is the reason your ideal clients want to buy from you!

What are the competitive advantages that will make your business a success?

Competitive advantages will be different for every business and in every market. Small town versus big city companies, ecommerce as compared to brick and mortar, and businesses that sell products contrasted with service-based companies, will all have different innovative features that will give each type of business a competitive edge. 

Even businesses that sell the same things in the same market will have unique competitive advantages.

When you are analyzing your business, you must do your market research, define your specific target audience and investigate your competitors. By doing so, you will find something distinctive about what you do that makes you stand out for the people you want to serve. That can be:

  • Unique technology or intellectual property
  • Unparalleled customer experience
  • Company culture
  • Innovative processes
  • Location
  • Pricing (be careful not to price so low that it detrimentally impacts profitability)

You have strengths and characteristics in your business that are difficult for competitors to duplicate, which gives you the competitive edge in your market, and that’s where you want to position your business to serve the people who matter most to you.

How do you achieve competitive advantage?

Once you identify the unique and innovative factors that give your business the competitive advantage, to dominate your niche, you must start marketing to the people who need what you offer. 

Your marketing strategy will need to encompass:

  • A memorable brand identity 
  • An in-depth understanding of the desires of your target audience
  • An excellent explanation of your value proposition, the results you deliver, and how your product or service meets the desires of your target audience 
  • The marketing channels that best suit your business and market

When marketing, never underestimate the power of your network, the power of association. Many people think they need to start marketing online or building sales funnels, which can be tricky to do well and quite expensive to learn, but this is not right for every business. However, every business will benefit from using their powers of association to increase the amount of word-of-mouth marketing they get – because nothing is more powerful than a referral from someone a potential client trusts. 

Unveiling your competitive edge can be difficult for entrepreneurs because we are so close to our businesses. Guidance from someone who knows how to uniquely position a business can make this process a lot shorter and far more effective.

If you would like to work with a mentor who’s built successful global brands, multiple times, I invite you to apply for my Master Mentor Program. It will accelerate your results! CLICK HERE to apply now!

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