What if our competitors are leading?

Whether your competitors are leading you or a new competitor has entered your space, solving this problem is all about positioning. Knowing where your offering sits in the hierarchical ranking of similar solutions in your prospect’s minds, and why, is the key to success here.

So much has been written about positioning and category creation that it can seem like a very complex undertaking to stack your offering up against your competitors’ offerings. We don’t think that’s true.

Here is a three step program to get out ahead of your competitors.

Do the Market Research

Hope is never a good strategy and guessing is never a good tactic. You must know how your brand is viewed in your market. If you don’t know what your prospects are thinking now, you won’t know what you need to tell them to see you as the leading solution to their problem.

When we work with clients, we start by analyzing their competition to find out what’s getting in the way of their prospects and retarding or redirecting their customers’ journeys.

We have our own methods for this, but if you’re working on your own, Yoast has a good little step-by-step online that will help you analyze your competitors.

Often, this involves talking with customers, both our client’s and their competitors’.

In cases where our clients are winning, we want to solicit and leverage testimonials. We’ll turn these recommendations into content in the next step, but gathering up this information is the first step.

Perfect Your Messaging

Once we know what our client’s prospects don’t know or don’t understand, we can start generating content that will bridge the gap that will win our clients more business. 

We need to write about all of the things that are confusing our prospects. We need to help them see their options more clearly and give them the information they need to continue their buyer’s journey. Mapping this out in advance makes this work easier.

Of the four types of stories every company needs to tell (origin stories, product stories, stories about our success, stories others tell about our success), the stories told by others always carry the most weight. So, it’s important that we fully leverage any testimonials we gathered in the first step.

Expand Your Message Dissemination

The best message in the world will not benefit you if no one sees it. The reason most companies are trailing their competitors is not because they have a better offering, it’s just that more people have heard about it because they have done a better job of getting their messages out into the industry they serve.

One way to do that is to increase marketing. While we do a great deal of work to get earned coverage or owned content, we do not recommend that companies forgo good marketing relationships for public relations or content marketing. They go hand in hand and all have their place in the company’s marketing mix.

Often, new business can come easiest from past customers who don’t know how the company has changed since they last worked together. By developing retention and loyalty programs companies can continually engage customers so they don’t wander.

Key to the program is to periodically review how the client is doing in relation to their top competitors and adjust strategically as required. By shifting to capitalize on competitors’ weaknesses and market opportunities, we can help our clients lead their industry on a consistent basis.

For more information about how RGA helps clients lead their industries or business sectors, schedule a call with us today.