167. Three Ways To Position Yourself As The Obvious Choice For Your Customer By Improving Your Competitive Advantage

Related Episodes:

• 075. Joe Pulizzi — Founder of Content Marketing Institute — Does Your Content Fit Into Your Buyer’s Journey?

• 116. Brian Clark — Founder of Copyblogger — On How To Create Content That Converts, Empathy Maps, How To Use Content To Build An Eight Figure Business and Lots More!

• 117. How to Create An Empathy Map

• The Steve Jobs Guide to Using Death as The Ultimate Change Agent

Key Points and Insights:

1:38 What is competitive advantage and why does it matter so much?
2:47 What happens if you don’t have a sustainable competitive advantage?
3:30 The importance of developing a deep understanding of your customer
4:20 Using a good content marketing strategy to position yourself as a trusted authority in your niche
5:50 Getting clear on your natural strengths to enhance your competitive advantage
7:40 How Steve Jobs sustained himself when building Apple.
9:34 Key Action Steps you can take right now to improve your competitive advantage

Transcript

Machine transcript, lightly edited for reading. The sponsor message and sign-off are left out.

Today I'd like to talk to you about something I consider to be very important when it comes to being successful in business and that something is competitive advantage

So what is competitive advantage and why does it matter so much when it comes to running a successful business? Competitive advantage can be defined as an attribute or attributes that allow your business to outperform your competitors It's essentially your edge that you have over the competition

For example, let's say your company is extremely good at sourcing high-quality leads at very low prices And that you can do this better than anybody else This means that you are able to operate with lower costs than your competitors Because you don't spend as much money as your competitors do to acquire high quality leads and lifelong customers This can be a very powerful competitive advantage and over time it will enable you to outlast your competition

In fact Sustainable competitive advantage is one of the key things that Warren Buffett looks at before he invests in a company and off late Warren Buffett has been investing very heavily in Apple which we'll touch on a little bit later in this episode

So what happens if you don't have a competitive advantage if you don't have an edge over your competition? Then over time you run the risk of being taken over by your competitors and your business runs the risk of losing customers to competitors and eventually decline and then failure So it's clear that competitive advantage is something that is very important to understand and continually enhance so in this episode I'd like to explore three ways of building a strong competitive advantage that sets you apart from your competition and Enables you to become the best and the most obvious choice for your client

So the first way is to develop a deep understanding of your customer I think it's important to ask yourself how does the world look from your customers perspective and what makes your service or product the perfect and if possible the only solution to your customers problem now interestingly What makes your product or service the perfect solution for your customer may actually go beyond? the product or service itself

Your customer may buy your product because they resonate with your values your beliefs and what your brand represents to them They may want to do business with you because they know like and trust you or your brand Content marketing can be a great way to achieve this

This brings me to my second point and that is to use a good content marketing strategy to position yourself as a trusted authority in your niche Content marketing is an incredible way to build a powerful competitive advantage It also creates a very unique position for you in the market because you as an individual or as a company are unique in the marketplace This can act as a really powerful differentiator

When you create powerful content that solves your customers problem Leading up to the purchase decision. It's quite easy for your customer to see that you're the only person That they trust to deliver a high quality solution to their problem because you've built that trust over time through good quality content and If you implement the first step discussed in this podcast episode Which is about developing a deep understanding of your customer Then you're likely to create content that deeply resonates with your client and solves problems at a very deep level for them

I highly recommend you check out episode 117 where I talk about how to use empathy maps to create a deep understanding Of your customer so that you can create content and products that solve their problems in a meaningful way

The third way to enhance your competitive advantage is to get clear on your natural strengths Getting clear on your natural strengths and doubling down on them so you can further develop your specific area of specialization is a very effective way of building your competitive advantage

So how do you get clear on your natural strengths? I think there are two important elements to this the first is to get really clear on what you're naturally good at and you can find out by Interviewing people that you've worked with before or people that are close to you and ask them What do you think I'm naturally good at? What problems do you think I solve very effectively? What areas do you see me as a natural expert in?

The second way to get really clear on your natural strengths is to think deeply about what you love doing

Steve Jobs talks about how he fell in love with typography when he was at Reed College and How that led to him developing the ethos that later became an important part of Apple This led to forming some very strong and clear opinions on Design which is one of Apple's core competitive advantages to this day So getting clear on what you love doing is a powerful way to understand Where you have a natural competitive advantage now, there's something I'd like to point out here and that is

What you're good at isn't necessarily what you always love doing. Although the two are often related so my recommendation would be to get clear on what you're good at and Also ensure that that is something you love doing because to be able to sustain yourself over the long term It is very important to love what you do

This is exactly what helps Steve Jobs sustain himself through years and years of challenges around building Apple and then later on Returning to Apple after he had been very unceremoniously removed as CEO Because Steve Jobs loved what he did He was able to build a company that really did change the world in very meaningful ways And then persevere even after he had been removed as CEO and later returned to the company in an amazing Turn of events. I have written a detailed blog post Around the Steve Jobs Stanford address where he discusses all these things and also linked to his talk on YouTube Which you can find on the Productive Insights blog I will link to that blog post in the show notes of this episode which you can access at productiveinsights.com/167

Because Steve Jobs was able to build a company that had such a powerful sustainable advantage Warren Buffett who historically avoided investing in tech stocks went on to buy massive amounts of Apple stock and according to CNBC.com he owned 239.6 million shares of Apple as at the end of March 2018 at the time Steve Jobs fell in love with typography He never dreamt that it would lead to the creation of Apple

So the point here is don't expect your competitive advantage to appear from predictable or specific areas in your life as Steve Jobs says you can't join the dots looking forward So don't expect to do that your competitive advantage can appear in the most unexpected places So always try and be open to having your competitive advantage become Apparent to you in the most unexpected of places

So what are the key action steps to get clear on your competitive advantage and really take your business to the next level? the first is to spend some time really getting to know your customer and a great way to start is to create an empathy map that really allows you to understand what your customers thinking hearing seeing and feeling So you can actually put yourself in their shoes and see the world from their perspective This will help you to create products and content that really solves their problem

In episode 116 With Brian Clark the co-founder of Copyblogger. We went into some significant detail about really understanding your customer and humanizing your content So you might find that useful you can access that at productiveinsights.com/116

The next action step is to ask yourself what you're really good at and what you believe you can do better than your competitors You can also ask people that are close to you what they think you're naturally good at and you can ask your customers What problems you have solved for them very effectively and where they feel you've added the most value all of these things will point to your natural abilities

The next action step is to ask yourself out of all these things that your customers and those around you believe you're naturally good at Which of these things do you really love doing and you can sustain doing over the long term?

If you have a business that employs a few people Then have a discussion with your team and come to an agreement on what you all really love doing as a business This is very important in terms of building sustainable competitive advantage over the long term

And the final step is to build content that really addresses Your customers problems at a deep level and solves their problem in a very effective manner Do this by understanding your customer Deeply and creating content that meets them where they are on their journey to ensure that your content meets the customer Where they are on their journey you need to create content that is customer focused rather than product focused So rather than creating content that promotes your products and your business It's important to create content that naturally leads to the purchase of a product that solves their problem

If you want to hear more about this check out episode number 75 with Joe Pulizzi the founder of content marketing institute I interviewed him about creating content that meets your customer where they are on their journey I'll link to all those episodes that I've mentioned in the show notes of this episode Which you can access at productiveinsights.com/167

If you don't already have a content platform, then I highly recommend you start building one today Your platform can be audio based like this podcast Written in the form of a blog or video based like a YouTube channel