Nibletz Staff
Competition in today’s business landscape can be intense, as more and more businesses enter the market and technology allows for expanded market reach.
In order to stay a step ahead of the competition, you need to have strategies, tools and tactics ready to make the most of your business. Whether is a new app or an employee with a great idea, there are a variety of ways you can gain an advantage in your market.
Keeping up with the competition
The first step to staying ahead of the competition is knowing what the competition is doing. Competitive intelligence allows you to see how you compare to other in your market in order to make better decisions for furthering your own business goals.
One way to gather this type of information is by using a web scraper to collect data from websites across the internet. If you want to know the best price to set for your product to maximise your profits, you might want to use a web scraping service to collect prices from competitors before setting your own.
Leverage new tech tools
There are a variety of digital tools available to cater to all businesses no matter your size or needs. Use Google Analytics to monitor your web traffic, HubSpot to keep track of your customers and marketing efforts, Slack to help your teams work together better and Skype to easily meet with clients, suppliers or other offices around the globe.
Communicate with employees
Employees are an often untapped resource for innovation in most business. Your employees work with your products or services every day, they know how they work and often how they could work better. Some of the most innovative companies make sure to regularly use employee insights and suggestions to advance their offerings and propel their business forwards.
…and with customers
If you don’t listen to your customers than you will surely fall behind the competition. The customer experience should be at the center of everything you do. Happy customers means better business! If you don’t currently communicate with your customers, you need to start now. Provide feedback forms or a dedicated email address, or run focus groups with customers to identify how to improve what you’re offering them.
Define your brand
A strong brand can be just important as a strong product. Customers and employees alike identify with strong, well-defined brands. If you know who you are as a company, and communicate that clearly, then customers will more easily be able to interpret and identify with your messaging.
Strengthen your culture
Your company culture often drives the way that employees approach their work. If you want employees to be innovative, creative and hardworking, you need a culture that supports that. Additionally, culture isn’t something you can just write down and expect it to come to life. Culture needs to be reinforced through action. Things such as office design, team set up and work day schedule all help to reinforce culture. Culture is unique to each organisation and can’t easily be replicated by a competitor, making it a good way to get ahead.
Always push forward
Competitive edge is never permanent, so you need to be constantly pushing forward to stay ahead. Once you get where you want to be, keep moving. Don’t let yourself get comfortable, because a plateau can quickly turn into getting stuck at the bottom of the pack.
