6 ways to gain a 
competitive advantage

Below are some suggestions on how you can 
gain a competitive advantage and maintain a 
leading market position.

Ask your customers!

It is absolutely imperative to understand your customers and potential customers' requirements.

Discover what your customers need that your competitors do not offer. Questionnaires are an excellent way to obtain feedback about your own company's performance and the performance of your competitors.

Over time, you will be able to use your customer feedback to obtain trend data. You should use this market knowledge as input data for making strategic decisions and for the purposes of action planning.

Continuous listening and learning

In a rapidly changing competitive environment, many factors affect customer preference and loyalty, making it necessary to listen and learn on a continuous basis.

Inviting customers to take part in field trials for new products; understanding how technology bears upon customer preferences or alternatives; and interviewing lost customers to determine the factors they use in their purchase decisions are all examples of how you can use vital information to improve customer satisfaction.

Even a small, simple change can significantly increase profits if you uncover then target your customer's preferences.

Understand your customers' value chains

Understand your customers' value proposition chains and how they are likely to change in the future will keep you abreast of the competition (value often refers to the degree of worth relative to cost and relative to possible alternatives of a product, service, process or function). Customers need to feel that they are obtaining value for the product or service they are buying.

By increasing the value of your product or service, you'll be able to influence buyers to choose your brand rather than a competitors'. Examples of value chains may include product attributes, delivery, customer or technical support and sales relationships.

However, make sure that your customers understand and perceive that increased value unless you may not reap the benefits of your efforts.

Sustainable low-cost leadership

Low-cost leadership. This strategy is based upon achieving sustainable cost advantages over the competition.

By using this low-cost edge you can either:

a) under price the competition to gain more market share or

b) earn higher profit margins by selling comparable brands at the market price.

Differentiate your business characteristics

Incorporate features that deviate from the average characteristics of your industry.

These features should ideally:

a) create value for your customers

b) should not be able to be easily mimicked by your competitors and

c) should avoid the necessity of you having to increase your cost base.

Examples include superior service levels, greater product availability, greater durability, technology leadership, satisfaction guarantees and an improved company image and product identity.

Master the digital universe

According to Bill Gates in his book "Business @ The Speed of Thought'' Microsoft's Chairman states that ONLY managers who master the digital universe will gain a competitive advantage.

For example, McDonald's has apparently installed a new information system to tally sales at all its restaurants in real time. As soon as you order two Happy Meals, a McDonald's marketing manager will know. Rather than having superficial or anecdotal data, the marketer will have hard, factual data for tracking trends and creating action plans.

Likewise, Dell Computers have gained a competitive advantage by using different combinations of face-to-face, ear-to-ear and keyboard-to-keyboard communication. By moving routine interactions to the Web, Dell has enabled customers to do many things for themselves (an experience they often enjoy!) and freed up their sales people to do more meaningful things with its key customers.

Practical tips to ensure 
that your target audience
read your newsletters
and magazines

An attention grabbing title

You should not underestimate the importance of a title for your Newsletter or Magazine.

Far too often, editors decide to focus their Newsletter or Magazine title on their company's name rather than something that might draw in more readers.  

Write your articles objectively

Although a Newsletter or Magazine is an excellent vehicle for promoting your company's products and services, it shouldn't read like a sales brochure.

By its nature, a Newsletter or Magazine should be a "soft" sell and provide useful information to readers. Potential readers will quickly throw away a Newsletter or Magazine that's full of sales hype and propaganda.

Use a third party writing style

Base your articles on factual information and write them as if you were an impartial third party. Instead of writing a headline that screams "Our revolutionary dishwasher is the best of its kind in the world," try a more factual, third person approach. A better headline would be: "Brewer now produces the best-selling dishwasher in the world."

Also, when you insert opinions into your stories, make them into quotes and attribute them to the proper people in your company, as would a newspaper.

Avoid the use of jargon

The purpose of a Newsletter or Magazine is to communicate, not to see how many times you can send readers scrambling to find a dictionary.

Avoid using long words and jargon when smaller words will do. Keep your writing casual, non-technical and conversational.

Use headline news

Everyone has come across the saying that you can't judge a book by its cover. But prospective readers DO judge a Newsletter or Magazine by its cover.

If the front page doesn't contain interesting, useful articles, most people will glance at it, classify it as junk mail and throw it away without even reading one story.

The same principals apply as they do with Tabloids, your front page should feature the issue's best articles that will draw in readers and stimulates their interest.

And remember, articles that are important to your company aren't necessarily important to the average reader!

Use at least one graphic per page

Graphics are important for two reasons.

First of all, people are more likely to read an article if it contains a graphic such as a photograph. That's because graphics, along with headlines, are the first things that readers' eyes are drawn to when they turn to a new page.

Secondly, graphics within a story are important because they provide much-needed visual breaks from solid blocks of text. A page containing nothing but row after row of endless text does not look inviting to read. However, a story that contains strategically placed graphics, such as illustrations and graphs, and break up the text into smaller, less-imposing portions looks more visually pleasing and will attract more readers.

Use software to improve your photographs

Few photographs are printed with perfect contrast, colour and brightness levels.

If you scan photos for your Newsletter or Magazine, be sure to electronically touch them up before you insert them into the layout. Otherwise, they'll probably look "muddy" in the final printed product.

Most image-editing software programs, such as Adobe Photoshop, will allow you to adjust the contrast, colour and brightness levels of a scanned photograph.

Use of colour and tints

Remember, your Newsletter or Magazine will be competing with other publications for your readers' time.

A splash of colour on your pages will make your Newsletter or Magazine much more visible to prospective readers.

Also, by using tints, you can give an impression of using more colours at no additional cost.