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10 Ways To Get An Unfair Advantage In Your Industry

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Do you offer a product or service in a marketplace, compettive or not, and it seems like you customers always seem to do business with someone else? Do you struggle to maintain customer loyalty because your customers want to “shop around” for other offers? There’s a reason they choose to go to other places, and it’s not always price driven. In fact, it’s simpler than you think.

Having an unfair marketplace advantage is a unique quality that sets a product or service apart in a way that makes competition seem far inferior or as a lesser option. In this, I’m going to explore some key factors that can give a product or service such an advantage and how you can leverage it now. Let’s get started.

1. Proprietary Technology or Intellectual Property

Proprietary technology or intellectual property (IP) can give a business the edge in the marketplace because it allows that company—and only that company—to use AND commercialize a unique idea, invention, or brand asset legally and be designed to whatever specification they desire. Competitors are at a disadvantage because they do not have access to the same technology, and are forced to come up with their own ideas.

Proprietary technology or IP rights mean that a business can prevent others from freely imitating or reproducing its unique products and service processes. This often leads to higher profit margins and market share. It also stunts the technogical growth of other companies because you may be the only company that can improve on the product, as other companies do not have a legal entry into this technology or intellectual property. If they create anything of the like, there is a legal process involvedm, which takes time and resources to overcome.

The most valuable features about your product are protected as you have built a wall around what you offer. Having proprietary assets makes it so that anyone who desires to use your product absolutely must do business with you, thus securing customer loyalty.

How to Leverage It:

  • Highlight your patented features or proprietary assets in your marketing.
  • Invest in ongoing R&D to keep your technology and ideas ahead of the competition.
  • Use your intellectual property as negotiation points when forming partnerships.

2. Exclusive Partnerships or Distribution

Exclusive partnerships with other companies and brands or distribution agreements can give a business the advantage because they limit competitors’ ability to access crucial resources, markets, or sales channels controlled by said partnerships and brands. While these arrangements are often legal and involve some sizable negotiation, they often secure future customer loyalty and brand reputation.

Partnerships like this are common in many competitive markets where companies seek to stand out. Ultimately, these deals can raise barriers for rival firms, protect profit margins, and secure a place at the top for companies to standout in the marketplace Partnerships with industry leaders, influencers, amicable competitors, and even smaller brands with large following are very common choices to create these partnerships with.

This works very well by securing exclusive deals with suppliers, distributors, or retailers. Having more outlets, a larger audience or following, expanded brand awareness, and community approval can amplify customer desire to do business with your company as it shows an active effort to discover new product horizons for future offerings

How to Leverage It:

  • Identify key partners who can offer unique marketplace access and advantages (e.g., grocery stores, convenience stores, online marketplaces, and suppliers).
  • Create win-win proposals that highlight how a partnership benefits all parties involved.
  • Maintain strong relationships and monitor KPI’s (key performance indicators) so partners can appraise partnership efectiveness.

3. Cost Advantages

A “cost advantage” is as simple as it sounds—simply have a better, more widely accessible price than your competitors. This is obtained when a company’s production, operating, and/or shipping bottom line costs are notably lower. This means a company can spend more on marketing, customer aquisition, and product improvement. The only drawback with offering competitive pricing is potentially sacrificing profit margins.

This, however can create a “race to the bottom” approach in the industry where companies lower their prices in an effort to compete because of market saturation. The last thing you want to commit your prices to is the lowest price you can possibly offer, essentially reducing your profit margin to zero. Your product, if far too much like other ocmpetitors and has a single advantage of price, is then called a commodity, because it’s far too available everywhere else.

How to Leverage It:

  • Optimize your supply chain logistics and costs (e.g., use wholesale suppliers, automate processes, cut corners with wise like-for-like process swap).
  • Scale production or services to achieve better pricing from suppliers.
  • Reduce production costs by investing in better machinery or with production improvement initiatives.

4. Superior Customer Experience

The customer experience is key when it comes to your marketplace advantage. The most powerful form of marketing is word of mouth, and if your customers feel good using your business, it’s likely they’ll recommend your business to others. By delivering an outstanding customer experience at every touchpoint—before, during, and after a purchase—you can secure customer loyalty in any market. After all, the longer customers stay with your business, the better.

There are also other unwritten benefits to providing an outstanding customer experience. One is that you are at a subjective liberty to charge more for your products and services. Because your customer service standards are that much higher, it will “make sense” to people that your prices are higher. The other advantage implied from customer service quality is people will defend your businesses reputation more. Customer service goes a long way in the heart of your customers. If they ever hear anything bad about your business, they’ll likely deny it.

How to Leverage It:

  • Optimize your onboarding, serving, money transaction, and post-use customer experience.
  • Build a “customer first” culture around your company with your employees.
  • Always look into automations, process improvements, and uograded technology to have your products and services provided in a faster, less expensive, and higher quality way.

5. Regulatory or Legal Barriers

Regulatory or legal barriers for a product or service make the barrier of entry difficult because they can be cumbersome, costly, and time-consuming for competitors to achieve. When one business has already obtained compliance certificates, secured special permits, or qualified for certain licenses, it effectively raises the bar for anyone else looking to enter or compete in the same market. This is great if you are a reseller of intelectual property for a brand that already has reputation and a large customer base with high demand.

By overcoming hurdles that can be prohibitively expensive, time-consuming to obtain, or administratively challenging, companies join the few in the market who have the ability to serve a particular audience a certain product that is hard to bring to the market. Think of things like chemicals, heavy machinery, or even weapons.

Businesses that successfully overcome these hurdles—or actively create them—can protect their market positioning, maintain higher profit margins, and deter competitors from entering that market. Being a business already established in this market, after properly building a customer base and with effective marketing, projects an image of credibility and safety to customers.

How to Leverage It:

  • Understand what legal challenges you may have to face to get into an industry and overcome them by qualifying for permitws, adhering to use standards, and complying with laws governing your business.
  • Get patents for any product or process you may offer your target audience.
  • Look into the advantages your company may have if you were allowed to do things your ocmpetitors can’t.

6. Exclusive Data

Access to proprietary and exclusive data allows companies to offer better insights, have more effective and informed decisions made, and offer an insiders edge into what is coming next for a market. Offering this information to the public for a price is also a very lucrative move. For example, Google’s search engine success relies heavily on its unmatched database of backlinks to the entire internets legion of websites.

With this data, companies can create better products, follow industry trends to fulfill current and growing customer needs, and solve problems a target market may be facing. Intelligence of this such can come from many sources like social media, the news, or even a private team that does public research through surveys or by crawling databases for specific information.

Exclusive data or information can come from anywhere, being sourced from places like current events, viral social posts, frequently asked questions in forums, and autofilled search topics in search engines. Informatino like this can even come from insider sources that your business may have through having a special list of contacts no one else can access. Having the such at your disposal makes your business have that much more of an edge.

How to Leverage It:

  • Develop software or systems to analyze proprietary and large data and give users more accurate recommendations and information.
  • Use exclusive data from people and places that are hard to access to refine product features, reduce churn, and improve marketing ROI.
  • Position your product as the ONLY go-to resource for up-to-date, industry-specific, trending insights.

7. First-Mover Advantage

Being the first to take action in an industry (often referred to as having a “first-mover advantage”) or take advantage of solving an industry problem with your offer as soon as it arises puts your business far ahead o the competiton. It’s by far the fastest way to grow and establish yourself in a competitive marketplace. Consider chatGPT as the first AI chatbot to the market. Because of this, it has the most users on its platform because of the ai image storm back in late 2022.

Being the first to market also makes customers associate the product with your businesses brand thus establishing your reputation as the go-to provider of that product. Competitor will look like posers or lower quality alternatives. Creating this foundation is a big responsibility because users will look to you for innovation of the offer so long as the need for what you provide exists, which could be related to the trend, and more often than not it is.

How to Leverage It:

  • Track trends and move quickly to fill the industry gap of what your customers need today
  • Constantly update and refine your product through innovation to stay ahead of any pursuant competitors.
  • Leverage early buyers feedback to establish trust and overall marketplace approval.

8. Community or Cult-Like Following

A strong community or cult-like following in an industry is one of the biggest cheat codes to having the edge in any marketplace. Imagine a group of people that know, believe, or simply want to believe your product is the best. This is like a pool of your biggest fans ofering you social proof your product is the best whether your product is very good or actually bad. This can happen when customers feel like they belong to something bigger than just a mere product, but a community or people who simply prefer the brand simply because it’s THAT brand.

Brands like Tesla, Peloton, State Farm, and Toyota thrive because of their passionate consumer communities. This natural and virtually automatic love for a company drives sales, produces marketplace approval, and reduces marketing costs due to the constant word of mouth marketing. Simply the appearance of a brands logo could drive more people to run to your company for your products and services. It’s a wise option to build a company’s customer culture to do this by doing things like having a slogan, merch, a USP (universal selling propositon) that’s constantly met, great social proof through feedback, clever marketing, life changing customer stories, celebrity endorsements, and humorous social media posts (memes).

How to Leverage It:

  • Engage with your fans on social media, online forums, and at community outreach events.
  • Create rewards programs, special rates, or incentivized use coupons to drive customer loyalty.
  • Get current and longstanding customers to share their story with the world why they do business with you.

9. Low Switching Costs & Effort

When a business makes it simple, easy, and inexpensive for new customers to start using (or “switch to”) its products or services, it increases the likelihood customers will use your products or services, even if they are using your own. Customers are likely to switch to you if they don’t have to think about much and tei lifestyle doesn’t have to drastically change to use a certain product you offer.

For example, if a customer is currently doing business with Nissan and wants to do business with Honda instead, all they’d really need to do is go from a 4 boor SUV to another 4 door SUV. They’ll be in the same style car and have the same lifestyle. They would not have to go through drastic life changes. This can apply to things such as but not limited to softwares, insurance, shoes, even furniture. A very controversial example is something like windows and their operating system generations.

Your new customers may need time to adjust to any changes that may come their way for adopting an altenative. I for one switched from a flip phone to an iphone back in 2014, and for the first few weeks absolutely HATED the iphone. I was about to return it. But eventually I got used to it. I never wanted an iphone, but I switched out of necessity.

The opposite of this can to your advantage, where it’s hard for customers to leave your company. This is not recommended. But, you can amke it hard for customers to leave your businesses offering by locking them in with contracts, proprietary product features, built up product ecosystems, and incompatibilities with other brands.

How to Leverage It:

  • See what your competitors are doing and create your product use and lifestyle similar to what they’re already using.
  • Have incentives that customers can take advantage of right away for switching.
  • Create contracts, annual plans, and product ecosystems for your brands offerings.

10. Unmatched Product Features

This is likely the most obvious and self-explanatory one. Your products features besting the marketplaces current offerings in as many ways as possible is paramount to getting the edge. However, it’s important that you be wary that this is not the only thing you may need for your product to shine in the marketplace. Other business operations such as marketing, branding, community building, and sales must occur so people can know you have the best features.

When a product stands out for its unmatched features in a marketplace, it commands attention, ensures loyalty, and often allows higher prices. This makes it ultimately harder than usual for other companies to compete in any degree. This strategy creates a world view that your company is at the forefront of industry innovation and standards.

How to Leverage It:

  • Look at your products and never stop improving. Always wonder what the next big move for your products features by learning what better functionalities would make sense to be added to your product
  • Listen to customers issues and problems in the industry and address that issue by having your product solve that problem or showcase how and why your product solves that problem
  • Document what your company is doing with its products and let everyone know what standards your products meet through public knowledgebases, documentaries, and video presentations.

Conclusion

Understanding and leveraging your offers advantages is crucial to outperforming competitors. These advantages, whether through technology, brand reputation, or customer loyalty, create barriers that others marketplace entrants struggle to beat. Focus on identifying and amplifying your company’s unique edge to dominate your market and secure long-term success for your customers and your company’s future.

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