5 Ways to Dominate Your Competition in 2017 and 2018

Winning in business does not necessarily mean you are (or should be) the smartest person in the room.

In my experience, winning in business is much more about being willing to work hard and challenge your own assumptions. It's about learning from your mistakes, and using that knowledge to take your business to the next level.

People who need to be the smartest in the room are often the least likely to learn from their mistakes. As a business owner, you need to be willing to fail and learn, quickly.

In this article, I'll share how you can win and dominate your competition this 2017.

Perform a competitor analysis

Position yourself to win against your competitors before they have a chance to outdo you. Through a competitive analysis, you’re actively assessing their actions. You’ll learn how they think and be able to respond to their tactics proactively and determine your own competitive position.

Much of the information you need to analyze your competitors is readily available online. Their website strategy, for example, is on display for anyone to analyze.

Now the question is do you have to study all your competitors. If you’re in a concentrated market, you most likely have few competitors, so by all means, study all of them. 

But if you are in a fragmented market with many competitors, it’s advised to use the Pareto principle or the 80-20 rule. It is most probable that 80% of the total market revenues come from 20% of the competition, so it pays to examine those 20 a lot closely. It will save you time but won’t sacrifice the integrity of your analysis.

Competitive analysis should be done periodically to determine whether your company’s competitive position is improving or not. Among the many things you need to find out are their competitive advantage, customer reviews, and market share. 

Build a trustworthy website

Most people will search the Internet before their purchase to check credibility of the products and services first. By building a trustworthy website you are giving your business the opportunity to show the consumers why they should trust you. 

Here’s how you can build a trustworthy website:

• Use authentic images. Much better to use visuals that look like you’ve taken yourself and your team in real situations.
• Provide social proofs
  • Reach out to your customers and ask for their valuable feedback and testimonials, and display them on your website.
  • Show media logos where your company was mentioned or featured
  • Display client and partner logos
• Publish articles that show the benefit of your product or service without being too salesy. How-to or instructional posts are the best way to get around this. 
• Set expectations intuitively through a microcopy. Make it clear to your website visitors what’s going to happen when they click certain tabs such as CTA buttons and links.
• Put the audience in the center of stories you tell.

Make sure to use the word “you” in your content as a placeholder for the reader’s name. It helps them be more receptive to your message.

Enhance customer experience

A Gartner research shows that companies expect to compete based on customer experience, describing it as the “new competitive battlefield”. The study points out the importance of delivering convenience and transformational experiences to the connected consumer. 

With a sea of alternatives and easy access to pricing and product information, it’s difficult to make customers remain loyal to a specific brand. So how do you break through? Run the business through the customer's’ eyes. Manage each episode of their buying journeys directly and invest in ethnographic research to uncover customer insights. 

Episodes can be grouped into three categories:

• Exploration and purchase is when customers collect information to help them decide which product to buy
• Usage is the actual utilization of a product or service which can either delight or annoy the customer
• Service or the after-sales episode can be emotionally intense for some customers. These involve paying bills, error reporting, paying bills, and resolving mistakes. 

Your people also play a crucial role in delivering great customer experiences. Each department is accountable for delivering success for each episode but there should be someone who’s responsible in driving innovations across multiple channels. 

Appointing a chief customer officer, for example, can help you manage shifting consumer expectations and the growing complexity of delivery channels. A marketing manager, on the other hand, can make recommendations in terms of budgeting, or which campaigns deserve more funding based on their results, among other things.

Turn your employees into brand ambassadors

Don’t underestimate the value of your employees’ input in dominating your competition. Studies have shown that companies with engaged employees outperform those without by up to 202%. 

As an extension of your brand, engaging employees to positively share your social media campaigns not only expands your social reach but is also proven to increase sales conversion. That’s because people view their recommendations in the same way they'd take a recommendation from a friend, and the interaction becomes more personal. 

Aside from sharing on social media, here are a couple more ways on how to encourage your employees to help you achieve a leading position in your niche: 

• Get them involved in the content creation process. Ask them to make introductions. Get their suggestions about how to address challenges, ask for their help in analyzing drafts of success stories.
• Feature your employees in your website. Interview them and make videos that show how they support the company’s growth and customers’ success. Upload your videos on YouTube and other social media channels for wider dissemination. Customize videos that easily catch attention, and consistent and aligned to your branding.

Now it isn’t always easy to engage employees in brand advocacy, but you can encourage them by offering some incentives or showing your appreciation by writing generous recommendations on their LinkedIn profiles. It also pays to reward them with a social mention to recognize their contributions.

To maximize the benefits of this tactic, train your employees periodically and provide them with resources on how to nurture their social media accounts and grow your reach. At the same time, set guidelines on what is and what is not appropriate to share as far as your company is concerned.

Step up social engagement through online communities and fan clubs

Follow the success of Starbucks, Sephora and Apple in creating community platforms for social brand engagement. Through their community or fan clubs, these brands have established themselves as the ultimate problem solvers in their respective industries. They now have, and continue on attracting, millions of loyal fans who serve as brand advocates, rewarded to motivate the consumers to log in and visit their page. 

Dubbed as smart community management, their strategy includes four steps:

• Developing a smart community management platform
• Appointing ghost community managers to guide discussion
• Gamification of the community
• Rewarding superfans

Companies creating their own online community or official fan clubs enjoy the following benefits over time:

• Your customers become brand advocates in a trustworthy environment.
• It saves time because the approach is much targeted to cater to actual fans and loyal followers.
• Provides consistent but predictable long-term investment
• Valuable customer feedback is measurable because you own your customers’ data indefinitely.

Taking this approach is not easy. Plan carefully, choose the right platform, and craft a great message to keep the discussion going.

Conclusion

Whatever your endeavor is, it counts to understand and focus on your goals. Continue challenging yourself. If you want to beat the competition, commit yourself fully. Keep your eyes on the prize and you may just be surprised by the results.