7 Keys to Marketing Genius: Competitive Advantage
The following is an excerpt from The 7 Keys to Marketing Genius by Michael Daehn
What sets your company apart? What areas are unique and cannot be easily copied? This is a crucial discovery for organizations. Your competitive advantage is what sets you apart and makes up the message that is broadcast by means of the integrated marketing communication process. This is where the rubber meets the road. You should come to one of three conclusions:
1. There are things about the company that are unique and not easily duplicated so they are better than the competition.
2. The company is just like their competition, no better no worse.
3. The company is worse than the competition.
Take a deep breath and go back to the list of strengths on the SWOT analysis to determine what items are distinctive to the company. When determining the competitive advantage of the company, I caution you to avoid basing it on a supposedly unique product. It is very difficult to have a sustained competitive advantage based on a product in our modern technological age. In the past, a technological innovation on a product could give a company the advantage for decades since others were not able to copy the product easily.
Today successful products can be, and often are, copied in a matter of weeks if not days. Many software applications are copied (though not necessarily legally) almost immediately. For these reasons, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to hold a competitive advantage based on technology or a technologically superior product. For these reasons, there has been a shift to the intangible elements of customer service and other value-added components dominating the marketplace. Competitive advantages today are usually based on service, reputation and longevity.