If you have a product or service that people really value and have the operational capacity to deliver and distribute it, there’s only one thing that can get in the way of your business goals: competition. In a hyper-competitive business environment, your company may struggle to achieve visibility – or you may bleed customers to other brands in your space.
In a digital-first world, a company’s competition is not limited to another store down the road … [+]
How can you ensure that your business can thrive in such a hostile field?
Beat the rush
One option is to “beat the crowds” by establishing your business in an industry or niche before your competitors have a chance to threaten your market footprint. This is known as the first-mover advantageand there are many historical examples of companies that have benefited immensely from this strategy.
One of the most popular and famous is eBay.com, the first fully featured online auction website and remains one of the largest marketplaces on the web. This is despite the fact that almost 30 years have passed to witness the emergence of a dominant competitor.
It is difficult to predict which new products and services will become popular, especially when it comes to technology-related products and services. Few people could have imagined in 1995 that online auctions would become so influential. Today’s smartest entrepreneurs try to predict what the next “gold rush” will be so they can gain a first mover advantage in their respective fields.
An example of this is the information exchange, a company that has been around since 2018, but has recently expanded its scope. TIEX was an early mover in the field of artificial intelligence. The company used AI to create “intelligence exchanges” and marketplaces for the food, auto, CPG and logistics industries. In an effort to become a Web3 pioneer, TIEX is introducing NFTs and smart contracts that allow creators of AI and ML-based products to collaborate, embrace digital ownership, and even earn royalties for their work. This should democratize access to intelligence models.
Acquire more capital
More money means more options. If you’re better at fundraising, you’ll have more capital than your contemporaries, and more capital means you can hire more people, solve problems faster, and achieve greater resilience in the face of economic turmoil or market shifts.
Capital also allows you to pursue aggressive strategies, such as blitzscaling, which allows your business to gain a first-mover advantage at scale (usually globally), even if your earliest stages of development were plagued by tough competitors.
To be the best
Here’s an easy way to beat your competitors: just be better!
If only it were that easy. Chances are you can’t beat even a single competitor in every category within the confines of a competitive market, but you can beat them in at least one category. That may be enough to make your business uniquely different.
Think about ways you can be the best. For example:
- Product Capabilities. Can you create a product that is objectively better than anything else on the market?
- Service value. Can you deliver more services or better services leading to customer perception of greater value?
- Price. Are you able to offer comparable products and services for a lower price without affecting your profit margins?
- Customer service. Can you improve the overall customer experience by providing better service and more robust support?
- Demographic appeal. Are you better off targeting a specific demographic, making your company the default choice for a segment of your otherwise shared customer base?
Any way you can stand out from your competitors is often worth it.
Choose a more specific niche
You can also limit your competition by forging a company that serves a more targeted niche. Serving a specific industry, targeting a certain demographic, or operating only in a limited geographic area can limit some of your company’s profit potential, but it also greatly limits the influence your competitors can have and forms the basis for your company to become truly dominant in this area.
Admiral is an example of a modern company that focuses on a specific niche. Numerous companies are trying to use decentralized technologies like blockchain to allow individual users to earn tokens, collaborate and even monetize their own data, but Admeal stands out for focusing exclusively on the food and recipe industry. Users of this platform can monetize their personal cooking data and gain both real and virtual experiences in the process. Amateur and professional chefs, recipe enthusiasts, food brands and CPGs are just a few of the culinary entities that can benefit.
You may never be able to beat your competitors, and there is a chance that they will still be bigger or more profitable than you even after implementing such strategies. But your business will be able to thrive, generate consistent revenue, and achieve iterative growth despite the competitive environment.
Janice has been with businesskinda for 5 years, writing copy for client websites, blog posts, EDMs and other mediums to engage readers and encourage action. By collaborating with clients, our SEO manager and the wider businesskinda team, Janice seeks to understand an audience before creating memorable, persuasive copy.