5 Ways To Create A Marvellously Competitive Strategy- Valutrics

As we all know, your business’ long-term goals and mission are always linked to certain assumptions about the future and market trends. And over time, every strategy and assumption becomes obsolete. Hence, strategy needs to be evaluated constantly and re-examined to see if it is fulfilling organizational goals and stakeholder expectations. Every business faces competition in the market. How to tackle this competition depends on the strategy each business adopts to steer forward.

Here are five ways to make your business strategy more competitive:

1. Identify your core competency:

This is the most important factor to distinguish your business. What is your business all about? What is the unique need of the customer that you are meeting? Once you have identified your core competency; this will help you define and build your brand identity, marketing strategy and position among competitors. This will be the fundamental building block for your competitive strategy.

2. Choose either price or quality:

There are two primary approaches to building competitive advantage. A business can either choose quality or price differentiation. This simply means that you have to pick one of these and make it your USP. You can offer the best quality product at a premium price and make that your advantage against your competitors; or you can offer the lowest-priced product in the market and lure customers away from the competition.

3. Align operations to the above:

Once you choose price or quality, you have to align the other parameters of your business to meet the same. If you are choosing the lowest price route, you will have to keep your manufacturing/ operational costs at a bare minimum. Only then can you gain a price advantage. If you are offering quality, you have to consistently maintain your quality standards.

4. Add service to build a true advantage:

To complement both these parameters, you must add a unique customer experience that no one else can imitate. Customers may forget what price they paid or the quality you offered, but they will never forget how you made them feel. The service and attitude of your people will go a long way in luring customers back to your shop/ establishment.

5. Choose an offensive, defensive or niche strategy:

As per threesigma.com, businesses can either choose an offensive, defensive or niche strategy to meet competition in the market. Offensive strategy includes moves like changing or altering the competitive model in the industry through forward or backward integration, acquiring competitors, developing substitute products, changing the mode of sales or distribution etc. Defensive strategy indicates accepting the industry competitive forces as a given and positioning your organization to best defend against the same. A defensive approach could also include selling off the business before competitive forces cause its value to drop. A niche strategy includes reducing the playing field of the business and taking a competitive position in a smaller, more attractive market segment.