Competitor Advantage: 5 Genius Alternatives to Fighting Your Competitors When Competition Gets Hard

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Here’s the thing: your business could be offering the best quality ingredient dishes, the hottest fashion, or the fastest Internet or delivery service and yet still, thousands of other companies exist that do just what you do. For instance, over 8000 food and beverage establishments exist within Malaysia alone, and the thousands of job opportunities available within the textile industry alone means that upcoming fashion brands have a lot to rival with. We’re talking about the word competitor.

 

But is direct rivalry always necessary? Although competition can be a good thing— after all, it pushes you to step out of your comfort zone and try harder, making you apply strategies you might never otherwise have applied— it doesn’t necessarily follow that one has to compete wherever competition lies, especially when taking on so many competitors might lead to a stressful and unhealthy amount of competitive work that may in turn drain you of your marketing creativity and potentially jeopardize campaign and brand success. Not just that, but when competition gets too much to handle, it may diminish your customer base and force you into lowering the prices of your products and services.

 

Therefore, before giving in to competition the traditional way, try these alternatives instead, which at first glance may seem counterintuitive but in reality work towards fighting your competitors.

 

1st Alternative: Surprise Your Audience in a Pleasurable Way

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While you could invest in research and development to enhance the quality of your clothing or flavors or user experience, your competitors might already be doing just that. What you can do then is something that’s you’ve never done before and to surprise your target market in an unexpected way: such as by being more flexible in terms of offering installment payment plans, more affordable pricing, rewarding them using points systems, or simply by engaging with them through consistent content be it in the form of blog articles, Instagram posts and Stories, or email newsletters. If you’re wondering how you can produce engaging blog articles, this will be super useful. 

 

2nd Alternative: Collaborate with Your Competitors

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In addition to using captivating and consistent content to draw people in and keep them as loyal readers or listeners (if you decide to produce videos and podcasts), why not work with your competitors, side by side? What we mean is that you can actually choose to collaborate with other businesses that are also doing what you’re doing whether for an upcoming product, promotion, campaign, project— which not only boosts customer engagement for both parties, allowing you to reach an entirely new audience— but lets you build rapport with your competitors. However, this alternative may not work so well for direct competitors: for example, if you’re both offering the exact same kind of product— think Coca-Cola and Pepsi. Instead, think Milka and Oreo.

At the end of the day, the result of your friendship and mutual kindness could lead to an even bigger following consisting of people who admire the values you stick by: teamwork, the common good, and helping each other. If you need even more convincing on the power of collaboration for brands, you should definitely read this too.

 

3rd Alternative: Pick One Business Strategy Where You Can Be 1 Step Ahead 

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Thirdly, you could try being one step ahead of your competitors. Sit down to brainstorm where exactly your brand can take the lead and stand out. For example, could it be that your competitors have forgotten about search engine optimization (SEO)? Even though the significant role SEO plays in boosting brand visibility may be clear to some businesses, other businesses (your competitors) may remain completely unaware about the fact that working on improving the SEO of their websites and blogs pays.

But you’re different: you know that SEO is a must due to its ability to bring more people to your website, and more people at your website translates into an increase in traffic and a higher number of potential customers. 

 

4th Alternative: Care for Your Existing Fans

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And then there’s the option of, hopefully unlike your competitors, going all out by offering more than you have been all this while, such as by providing more menu options, the opportunity to customize products and personalize (or some say “humanize”) customer interactions (versus only using artificial intelligence tools to interact with potential customers), which on the whole strengthens customer service.

To state our case even further, in the long term, businesses that intend to sustain themselves for the long haul would fare better by focusing on retaining their customer base and how to get more value from them because attracting people to become loyal customers isn’t an easy task in today’s competitive market. Just think of how some flight attendants go out of their way to make a passenger feel comfortable and safe: make your company the one whose flight attendants are trained to do just this, if you get our metaphor.

 

5th Alternative: Take the Opportunity to Appeal to a Larger Audience

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Last but not least, instead of going head on with your competitor, why not deliberately create opportunities for you to shine— such as by appealing to yet another kind of audience. For example, if your brand has always made clothes for young women, you could consider designing a line just for older women, athletic women, skinnier or plus-sized women, and this will naturally widen your target audience.

Other examples of creating opportunities for you to shine as a brand include hiring subject matter experts who can guide you on specific strategies to apply to specific target audiences and goals, hosting live events to give potential customers an enjoyable experience to associate your brand with, or contributing to social causes such as by organizing charity events (since most people find music pleasurable, charity concerts are a good choice). For fresh ideas related to how your brand can support social causes like ending the stigma towards mental health, this article is a good start.

 

Final Words

Whatever strategy you decide to use in the face of tough competition, it’s worth remembering that many tricks exist which you can have up your sleeve besides just doing your best to keep your competitors down and beating them: Continuously surprising your target audience, collaborating with your competitors, being one step ahead at a particular business or marketing strategy, caring for your existing customers, and finding opportunities where you can showcase your brand image, values, and mission are all clever alternatives to fighting your competitors. Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer!

If you’re still looking for guidance in discovering or expanding your target audience, or need some assistance in revamping your social media presence, feel free to reach out to us.