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What Usain Bolt can teach you about getting ahead of your competitors
To beat your competition you just have to be 1% better than everyone else.
Don't believe it? At the Olympics, in terms of time, Usain Bolt's nearest competitor was just 1% behind him, yet no-one remembers who came second.
If you are not the best at what you do, then why do it?
Focus on what you are world class at, and you will outstrip everyone.
But how do you do this?
You could spend your time becoming obsessed with all of your competitors, watching their every move, and then setting out to beat them in all areas. But this could be a long process.
Alternatively, waste no time and just dive in. You know who the best in your market is. Look at your business in comparison and focus on making every single person you hire, everything you make or serve and how you communicate 1% better than anything you have ever seen elsewhere.
Before you do this you must have your brand in place
Ask yourself:
- What do you do? Keep it simple as if you were explaining it to your grandmother.
- Who is your one type of customer that you can build your business on forever?
- Why do people come to you?
- Why are you better than any other competitor?
- If your brand left the room, how would people describe it? How would it speak?
Add this all together to create a statement that describes your role in the life of your customers.
Once your brand is defined, this is the lens that you look through and how you approach strategy for all areas of your business – people, price, place, product and promotion. Be open and honest; you'll have to interrogate every inch of your business to find your 1%.
But once you get into your stride, you can turn that marginal difference into a landslide.
Competitor analysis
Your market is highly competitive and in order to gain and maintain a competitive advantage your strategy needs insight to deliver against your objectives.
What is your competition doing? Why? What success are they having? What can you learn from their success? Their mistakes?
To plan your analysis, ask questions such as:
- Who are your competitors and which should you focus on?
- Those that pose the greatest threat? (current and/or potential)
- New entrants that need to be profiled?
- Are there competitors outside your sector that need to be reviewed?
- Are there competitors in other countries that are relevant to your analysis?
- Do you need to include those that only indirectly compete with you?
An unduly broad or excessively narrow definition of your competition will compromise the effectiveness of your analysis.
- What are each of their strengths and weaknesses? What are their opportunities and threats?
- What is their competitive advantage? What is their proposition (to which customer segment)?
- How different is your offer, to that of your competitors?
- How big are they? Are they growing or shrinking? Why?
What is their market share? (revenues and volumes).
What are their sales by market? By brand?
- What is their reputation in the market place? (trade and consumer) Why?
- What is the profile of their senior management?
- What are their corporate objectives and marketing objectives?
What is their corporate strategy? Their marketing strategy? Their market position?
How are they likely to respond to your corporate and/or marketing strategy?
- What about media spend? By brand?
When and where do they advertise? Why? What offers do they make? Why?
- What is their digital strategy? Does this give them a competitive advantage?
- Who are their customers? Do you both target the same market segments?
How good are their retention levels? And customer satisfaction levels?
How well are they meeting the needs of your target audience?
- How successfully do they promote themselves?
- How have they set up their operations to meet the needs of particular customer segments?
- Where are they vulnerable?
- What trends are they following?
- Who are their key suppliers?
- What is their distribution strategy?
- What is their pricing policy?
Use e-alerts to keep track of them online.
Sources of information and data:
- Talk to your customers, your sales team, your intermediaries, media and trade body contacts.
- Search online.
- Carry out research within your marketing intelligence resources.
Some of the main uses of your analysis
- Your corporate strategy.
- Your marketing strategy.
- Your marketing plan.
- New product development
- Contingency planning.
Market intelligence/analysis
- Guidance on how to analyse your market and get market intelligence.
- Use a marketing audit to analyse the external and internal dimensions of your market.
Use Porter's Five Forces model.
Eight sources of competitive advantage.