Developing a Competitive Advantage

 

Competitive advantages are the factors that allow your company to produce goods or services better or more cheaply than your rivals and are the key factors in what makes your business better than others.

If your competitive advantage can be easily copied or imitated, it is not considered a competitive advantage.

Your competitive advantage is the essence of your strategy, messaging, and marketing. According to Jack Welch, “If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.”

 

Comparative Advantage vs. Differential Advantage 

Comparative advantages and differential advantages are the two different forms of competitive advantages.

A comparative advantage is your company’s ability to produce something more efficiently, leading to greater profit margins.

One way to achieve a comparative advantage is to increase your economies of scale. An economy of scale is the savings in costs your company generates when it increases levels of production. Greater production leads to lower production costs because it more evenly distributes the fixed costs.

A differential advantage is your company’s ability to produce unique products or of higher quality than your rivals.

Examples of a differential advantage include advanced technology, patent-protected products or processes, superior personnel, and a strong brand identity. High-end brands, such as Louis Vuitton, utilize a differential advantage. Their high quality and uniqueness allow them to charge much for their products. 

Economic Moats

Warren Buffet described sustainable competitive advantages like a moat.

The image is that your company is like a castle, and your competitive advantage is the moat surrounding the castle. The better your competitive advantage, the greater the moat. A large moat makes it nearly impossible for other castles (businesses) to attack your castle (company). This illustration provides an excellent analogy for what a sustainable competitive advantage can do for your business. 

You can create your own moat by strengthening your brand, raising barriers to new entrants through tactics such as regulations, and defending your intellectual property through patents. 

How to Create a Competitive Advantage

Competitive advantages are imperative to the success of your business. A competitive advantage technique can be found in many areas.

1. Find a focus area

Trying to be great in everything often results in excellence in nothing. Therefore, most businesses find it best to hone in on a focus area. This is a market niche in which your company can excel. 

2. Employ the best talent

Your employees will determine the success of your business. Therefore, employing passionate, talented people is imperative. Search for talent and reach out. It’s better to wait for the right person than hire the wrong one. 

3. Utilize rewards

Incorporate rewards into your business. You’re going to need to incentivize your employees to go above and beyond their call of duty by rewarding high performance. Examples of rewards include money or vacations. 

4. Foster experience

Now that you have amazing employees incentivized through rewards, the next goal is to keep them wanting to work for your business for years to come.

The greater experience your employees have, the better your business’s customer service. Avoid a high employee turnover rate by making your work environment a place your employees will want to stay for years to come. 

5. Speed

Customers care about speed.

The faster and easier it is to buy from you or use your services, the better. Look throughout your process to find ways to cut down on time and make it easier for your customers. 

Dominate 2022 by establishing an effective competitive advantage! 

To contact Chuck Gherman, Theresa Kauser or Veronica Carter for more information about how Printing Arts Press powered by PROforma can help organizations with their Marketing and Human Resource needs through promotion and print communications please visit www.printingartspress.com.

The Power of Storytelling in Marketing

Storytelling has been around for ages.

To this day, people love stories. It unites people while stimulating imagination and passion. Although often seen as a fun pastime, stories usually have a purpose, such as sharing a message, conveying a moral, or telling history. 

Humanize the business

One sometimes overlooked use of stories is within business marketing campaigns.

Stories can be especially moving in the marketing world. Storytelling humanizes the brand, which is beneficial because people like buying from other people. The more you can humanize the brand, the better. 

Stories to remember 

Storytelling is also useful for remembrance.

People tend to remember stories better than they do statistics. Sometimes, being remembered is half the battle. After all, the marketing world is saturated with numerous businesses vying for attention. “Brands that tell more sell more.” Storytelling is a unique way to stand out. Stories take on different formats depending on their purpose. 

What is storytelling in marketing? 

Marketing in storytelling has a couple of unique features. 

Storytelling in marketing is… 

• Combining information with a narrative. It takes skill to effortfully combine relevant information into a story. But that’s exactly what great storytelling marketing strategies do. They effortlessly combine the facts with the story.
• Your brand: storytelling elevates your brand. Your brand in itself is already meant to humanize your business and give customers an idea to attach themselves. Storytelling will help you achieve this.
• About your customers. Your customers are at the heart of every story. Your main character resembles your ideal customer. The better the characters resemble your customers, the more effective your storytelling will be.
• Emotional and engaging. Stories are fun. Stories are emotional. Don’t shy away from these key components because it’s a marketing campaign. If you can add emotionality and engagement to your story, the better the story will be. Commercials that generate a chuckle or a tear are the ones that are the most memorable and impactful. 

Stories can be found in all shapes and sizes. 

• Stories can be written. Written stories are found in articles, blogs and books
• Stories can be spoken. Spoken stories are at presentations and pitch panels.
• Stories can be in an audio format such as within a podcast
• Stories can be digital. Digital stories are in videos, animations, interactive stories, and games. 

The medium in which you tell your story is important because how the story is told adds to the meaning of the story. 

How to tell compelling stories

Practice

Great storytelling takes practice.

Effectively combining your company into a story that is compelling and coherent is challenging. It takes time, patience, and practice to develop the skill. Just remember that, like everything, practice yields improvement.

With storytelling, the best way to improve is by doing. However, having a good foundation is helpful. 

Remember your basic storytelling outline:

• The introduction sets the scene and gets the audience wanting more.
• The rising action is where the conflict is set up and built. Tension and suspense are created. 
• The climax is the most exciting part of the story. The tension that has been rising bursts and the conflict emerges.
• In the falling action, things settle down and go back to normal.
• The conclusion. Every story needs a conclusion. In marketing, it is generally best if the ending is a happy one. Usually, happiness is created from your product or service. Here is the best part to include a call-to-action where you encourage the potential client to buy from your business. 

The characters 

A great story has great characters.

In marketing, the best characters are relatable. The more your potential customers relate to the characters in your story, the more they can empathize with the character’s problems. The prospective client will then see your company as a means to fix their problems. 

Try implementing new strategies, such as storytelling, to your marketing campaign to complement the new year.

To contact Chuck Gherman, Theresa Kauser or Veronica Carter for more information about how Printing Arts Press powered by PROforma can help organizations with their Marketing and Human Resource needs through promotion and print communications please visit www.printingartspress.com.

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