The idea of competition, particularly in a creative atmosphere, is always there; if you don't acknowledge that, you are doing yourself and the process a disservice. There is a tendency among some businesses to criticize and belittle their competitors. This is a bad procedure. Praise them. Learn from them. There are times when you can co-operate with them to their advantage and to yours! Speak well of them and they will speak well of you. You can't destroy good ideas. Take advantage of them.
The problem is, too often entrepreneurs focus too much on the competitors that they fail to pay enough attention to the market and its own business.
With that being said, here are five things you need to pay attention to when thinking about the competition by our flyboat prospective of Growth
1. Map Out the strengths and build on them
Research, research, and then do some more research. Ask questions such as:
What makes you different from your competitors? what you can offer better in comparison to your competition?
What makes your customer happy? What your competitors unable to deliver
All products in the market have their own strengths — something you offer better than your competition. If your offering doesn’t have any leverage over other brands then you have to go back to the drawing board phase.
finding your product or service’s competitive advantage and capitalizing on them may spell the difference between bankruptcy or record-breaking sales.
Instead of trying to imitate our opponent’s game — what makes them sell — why not focus on our own strengths?
Prioritize efforts on improving our selling points than trying to copy other brands’ assets.
more efficient way of spending your time and resources.
make sure your consumers know what makes your brand a better choice
2. Competitive Landscape in watchlist
Identifying your competitors. There are two types of competitors: direct and indirect.
A direct competitor is one that is offering the same product or service and targeting the same customer base as your business.
An indirect competitor is one that sells similar products but targets a different customer sector, or sells different products and services but shares your customer base.
To find these businesses, simply do a web search or use websites such as Product Hunt and Crunchbase to help you find similar products and services and conduct market research. Find as many competitors as possible to better understand who you're up against.
You can’t get ahead of your competition if you have no idea what they’re doing.
Identifying and researching competitors is important
different perspective on your business or customer base
knowing what your rivals are doing will help you plot your next steps
3. Financial management : align with it
How do you know your competition management plans are going in the right direction?
For that, it's important to keep track of your business finances,
As you know Finance is the backbone of your business, costs, sales, revenue, prices, market shares, etc — so it’s important to keep track of your finance flow. Regardless if it’s a gain, and all the more if it’s a loss.
knowing where you stand in the market, how far your consumer reach is, and what are the costs to achieve your goals are very important.
Having concrete figures will also motivate you to improve them.
A company's finance function, in the digital world, is a driver of competitive advantage, of strategy, and of innovation.
In a competitive environment, the winner will be the company that best acquires financial resources, invests those resources in the right activities, and—over the long term—best manages risk
know more about your finance to give you a clear picture of business
Analyzing your expenditure to know if the cost is benefiting the overall customer acquisition
4. Differentiation for customer
Customer is the king, we are doing all this competition for the customers, so it’s important to pay attention to whether it’s not enough that you create a product that will make their lives easier or you should keep customer service as your top priority. Wanting to solve their problems easily and keeping them happy is what will make them stick with your brand.
listen to their suggestions
consider their ideas,
assure that you’re hearing them out.
Good customer support
This could even be your competitive edge, which will make your brand appealing to customers.
Uber is one of the best case studies because it shows exactly what you need to do in order to provide an outstanding customer experience.
People at Uber have identified all the pain points people faced while hailing a cab- and they eliminated them one by one. No more painstaking anticipation while waiting for your cab because you know exactly where your ride is at any time and how much it takes until it’s there.
enabling ratings for both users and drivers is a way of ensuring that their services will always meet their clients’ and their partners’ expectations.
Drivers only talk to you if you’re in the mood for conversations and some of them even offer you something sweet along the way.
In-app credit card payment is also an advantage, given that fewer and fewer people carry cash on them.
In the end
There are only two sources of competitive advantage: the ability to learn more about our customers faster than the competition and the ability to turn that learning into action faster than the competition. as an entrepreneur, your need do know that all the good businesses, today started from scratch - Facebook, Uber, Airbnb, Tesla, Virgin Atlantic. However we believe in your product, have a concrete plan, a well-researched strategy, and the will to work eight days a week, 25 hours a day, it’ll be hard not to see your startup succeed and beat the competition.
Flyboat is a services-based organization, we always try to keep our stakeholders to have a smooth experience that is less stressful. Cause we understand as an entrepreneur you might be wearing different caps every day. And it's important for you to have the best resource for your business.
If you are looking for any services related to pitch decking and financial modeling, please do connect with us and enjoy a smooth user experience, as above mention points are our fundamental way to tackle competition. Click on the button to connect.
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