Your competitive strategy helps your business by guiding your positioning to make sure your business stands out, pushing you to iterate and outsmart the competition, helping you see where your competitors are weak so you can accentuate where you are strong, and making your competitive advantage defensible.
Too many business owners cover their eyes rather than keeping tabs on their competitors. That’s dangerous; competitors move fast and unless you open your eyes, they’ll leave you in their dust. Knowledge gained from your competitors can be used to create marketing strategies that take advantage of their weaknesses.
Learn to out beat your competition every time in the Crush Your Competition Masterclass. A course designed to teach you how to properly define and segment your competition. This course will also teach you how to define your businesses strengths, and to prioritize them to aid in the development a competitive advantage unique to you and your business.
In this course, you will learn:
- Why do I need competitors
- How can I identify opportunities within those segments?
- Which of my company’s strengths are most important to emphasize?
- Which companies are my competitors?
- What if I can’t find any competitors — or what if my company has too many?
- How can I fairly rank my company and my competitors?
There are three compelling modules on crushing your competition and three BONUS modules that take you to the next level and apply what you learned to creating a go-to-market strategy for your business.
1. Define and Segment Your Competition
Contrary to popular belief, your business should have plenty of competitors. Thriving competition shows you’ve pinpointed a viable market. Defining and segmenting your competitors helps you better articulate your company’s unique value, while reassuring investors that your offerings will fill an existing need others recognize as an opportunity.
In this section, we’ll delve deep into the competition, with strategies for identifying and evaluating competitors and classifying them to discern where opportunities lie to fill gaps in the market.
2. Build a Compelling Competitive Matrix
A competitive matrix is more than a pretty picture. By highlighting your unique strengths vis a vis other players in the space, you gain a greater understanding of your market, and a valuable marketing tool. Learn how to select and plot relevant strengths, and how to identify and evaluate competitors, to position your business as a market leader.
3. Create a Unique Competitive Advantage for Your Business
What do you offer your audience that no one else can? Defining your unique competitive advantage is the foundation of a successful business launch. This section equips you with a framework for identifying your company’s unique competitive advantage, from surveying the competitive landscape to pinpointing what sets you apart.
Extra Content for You
4. Create a Powerful Positioning Strategy
How do your customers see you? The promises you make about your offering, and customer perceptions of how well you deliver on those promises, combine to create your market positioning. This section provides a six-step framework for honing your positioning. You’ll examine the facets of your business to find the elements you deliver that resonate most with customers, use starter wording templates as a jumping-off point, and validate your work with seven key criteria.
5. Determine Your Target Market
Who are you selling to? While entrepreneurial optimism might lead you to believe the entire world is your market, success depends on a focused and detailed definition of your core audience. Demographic profiling is just the start; identifying your target market should also include delving into psycho-graphic characteristics such as belief systems and lifestyle choices.
In addition to providing starter lists of demographic and psychographic attributes that enable you to build a customer persona, this section includes tips for developing your own business-specific market characteristics, with advice specifically for B2B businesses and companies operating across international borders and cultures
You’ll also access methods for ensuring that the target market you pinpoint is consistent with other elements of your go-to-market strategy, from acquisition marketing channels to pricing and promotions. The opportunity to apply tactics step by step in a workshop exercise empowers you to develop a target market definition unique to your business and in alignment with your startup goals.
6. Build a Compelling Unique Value Proposition
To communicate value to customers, you need more than a list of features; you must communicate both the practical and emotional benefits customers will derive and create a story that calls out the most unique and compelling attributes you offer.
This section will guide you through the process of identifying which business elements to highlight in your unique value proposition. You’ll access tools for brainstorming how your offering satisfies emotional desires, alleviates fears or stresses, and addresses immediate practical needs, including prompts specifically for B2B companies.
You’ll learn why your unique value proposition is different than your unique competitive advantage, while also surveying your competitors’ unique value propositions to better understand what sets them apart from each other – and what distinct elements your own business should highlight.
Workshop exercises will apply the tactics in real life, so that you can better articulate your businesses most compelling and unique benefits and set the stage for success.
Build a Compelling Competitive Matrix
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1What it means to define and segment competition
You want competition. Why? Having competition not only validates the market you're in but is an indicator of an established market—which is a risk-reducer from an investor's point of view. Embrace your competition. This overview covers the importance of evaluating the strengths, weaknesses and position of your competitors.
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2Indirect Competition
You are competing with so much more than just your direct competitors. We will teach you the important concept of wallet share and how to use it to your advantage.
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3Wallet Share
Most entrepreneurs completely forget to uncover their indirect competitors but we will make sure you know exactly how to identify these important competitors.
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4The Competitive Binder
The competitive binder is one of the best tools you can use to keep up to date on every move your competitor makes. We will walk you through a sample competitive binder.
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5You must have competition
If you don’t think you have competition, we will show you that you do. You want to know how to uncover your competitors.
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6Too much competition?
Do you think you have too much competition? Let us solve that problem for you.
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7Nutrition Bar Market Case Study
We will walk you through a great case study that shows step by step how to define and segment your competition.
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8Workshop - Define and Segment Your Competition
Time to put pen to paper—or fingers to keyboard. Take a look inside the Prep Worksheet that prepares you to define and segment your competition for your business plan. The key to success is taking the time necessary to deeply understand your business and be prepared to run it—use this workshop and Prep Worksheet to do just that.
Create a Unique Competitive Advantage for Your Business
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9Competitive Matrix Explained
A competitive positioning matrix is a required part of every business plan. This in-depth walk-through shows how to create your competitive positioning matrix, starting with how to identify your brand's strengths—such as price, expertise, convenience, completeness or breadth of offering, and level of customization. Next, you'll learn to pair your brand's strengths and express them in the context of the X/Y axis of the matrix. Also covered is how to choose the competitors you'll include and plotting them so that your business stands out. Both Christopher Elbow chocolatier and Tesla are used as case examples.
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10Part 1 - Determining Your Strengths
The first step in the process of building your competitive matrix is determining your strengths. We will show you how to pick the optimal strengths for your business so you show your business in the best possible light.
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11Scoring Your Strengths
The trick to the entire competitive matrix is to use your top two strengths over your competition. Get this right and you will have a competitive matrix that any investor will want to invest in.
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12Express the Top 2 in a Range
Your strengths must be expressed in terms of a range (low to high, small to big, etc.).
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13Part 2 - Select Your Competitors
Now you can select the competitors you want to use in your competitive matrix. Make sure you select a good variety of them (big and small).
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14Part 3- Evaluate and Plot Your Competitors
Finally, you will evaluate each competitor and plot them inside the matrix. Remember the key is that you are positioned up and to the right!
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15Workshop - Building Your Competitive Matrix
Time to put pen to paper—or fingers to keyboard. Take a look inside the Prep Worksheet that prepares you to create a competitive positioning matrix for your business plan. The key to success is taking the time necessary to deeply understand your business and be prepared to run it—use this workshop and Prep Worksheet to do just that.
Extra Content for You: Create a Powerful Positioning Strategy
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16Unique Competitive Advantage Explained
When we show up to the present moment with all of our senses, we invite the world to fill us with joy. The pains of the past are behind us. The future has yet to unfold. But the now is full of beauty simply waiting for our attention. What makes you unstoppable in the marketplace? That's the very thing that your unique competitive advantage answers. Crafting your unique competitive advantage gives customers a reason to buy from you, informs your positioning, and drives your business strategy. This overview of unique competitive advantage also includes a look at WOW air and what makes their unique competitive advantage differentiated, unique, sustainable, and relevant in the market.
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17Unique Competitive Advantage - Company Examples
Here are some great examples of companies that you will know and their unique competitive advantages. Included is an analysis of the unique competitive advantages of brands like Nordstrom, Amazon, IKEA, Apple, and more.
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18How to Determine Your Unique Competitive Advantage
Your unique competitive advantage is what sets you apart from others in the eyes of your customers. You can build a resilient unique competitive advantage by following a four step process: evaluate your strengths and passions, analyze the competitive landscape, identify the core characteristics of your unique competitive advantage, and test it for sustainability, differentiation, and defensiveness.
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19Step 1 - Evaluate Your Strengths
Time to evaluate your strengths (for both the business and yourself). Include in this list your passions as that will also drive your business.
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20Step 2 - Evaluate Your Competitive Landscape
You must know your competitive landscape inside and out in order to come up with what makes you unique, special and different.
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21Step 3 - Identify Your Unique Competitive Advantage
Coming up with your actual unique competitive advantage is much easier than you think. It is also critical to your business's success.
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22Step 4 - Test Your Unique Competitive Advantage
You are not done until you test your unique competitive advantage to make sure it is truly unique. You must be able to defend this with any investor.
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23Common Mistakes
Here we review the common mistakes that so many entrepreneurs make when coming up with their UCA. Let's make certain these do not happen to you.
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24Workshop - Unique Competitive Advantage In Action
Time to put pen to paper—or fingers to keyboard. Take a look inside the Prep Worksheet that prepares you to articulate your unique competitive advantage for your business plan. The key to success is taking the time necessary to deeply understand your business and be prepared to run it—use this workshop and Prep Worksheet to do just that.
Extra Content for You: Determine Your Target Market
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25Positioning is about Your Customer's Point of View
How will customers perceive your products and services? How do you want them to? These two questions are at the heart of product positioning. This course provides a thorough walk-through of key product and service attributes, competitive positioning analysis, and crafting a solid positioning statement for your business.
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26What Investors are Looking For
Let's dig a bit deeper to see exactly what investors are looking for in your positioning statement. Investors want to know exactly how your customers will see your products or services.
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27Ben and Jerry's Case Study
A great case study from one of the most well known brands in the world, Ben and Jerry's. We will walk through their positioning strategy.
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28Keys to Success
Let's examine the keys to success in coming up with an incredible positioning statement for your business.
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29The Positioning Framework Overview
You will learn step by step exactly how to position your product or service. In this video we introduce an easy to use framework that walks you through the process.
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30Step 1 - Create Meaningful Attributes - Part 1
There are a host of important attributes that you can use to position your product or service. In this video, we will go through each positioning attribute and show you how to apply it to your business.
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31Step 1 - Create Meaningful Attributes - Part 2
There are a host of important attributes that you can use to position your product or service. In this video, we will go through each positioning attribute and show you how to apply it to your business.
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32Step 1 - Create Meaningful Attributes - Part 3
There are a host of important attributes that you can use to position your product or service. In this video, we will go through each positioning attribute and show you how to apply it to your business.
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33Viking Cruises - Case Study
See how to apply a positioning strategy by learning how companies like Viking Cruises do it for their business. A great case study.
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34Step 2 - Custom Attributes
In addition to standard attributes, we highly recommend building custom positioning attributes specific to your industry that you can use to position your business against your competition. These can be very meaningful to your customers and help you differentiate against your competition.
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35Step 3- Evaluate / Rank Attributes
Time to evaluate and rank your attributes ensuring that you use the most powerful ones that set you apart from your competition.
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36Step 4 - Evaluating Positioning Rankings
Now lets take a look at how your attributes stack up so we can we can use them to your benefit.
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37Step 5 - Positioning of Your Attributes
Each attribute you have picked now needs to be turned into a statement that you can use as part of your overall positioning strategy. How you write this statement will say a lot about your overall positioning statement.
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38Step 6 - Your Positioning Statement
Finally, it's time to write your positioning statement. You can either write a single statement or a bulleted list that reflects your positioning attributes.
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39Common Mistakes
Let's take a look at some common mistakes
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40Workshop - Position Your Product or Service in Action
Time to put pen to paper—or fingers to keyboard. Take a look inside the Prep Worksheet that prepares you to articulate the position of your product or service for your business plan. The key to success is taking the time necessary to deeply understand your business and be prepared to run it—use this workshop and Prep Worksheet to do just that.
Extra Content for You: Build a Compelling Unique Value Proposition
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41Target Market Essentials
Which people are most likely to appreciate and buy your products or services? What is their age range, geography, and favorite hobbies? Your target market is that group of customers, fitting a certain profile, who are the ideal purchasers of your product or service. In this overview of demographics and psycho-graphics, you’ll learn how to clarify and refine the target market for your product or service. This Microcast includes a look at target markets of brands such as Supercuts, Rolex, and Lexus.
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42Why is Your Target Market So Important?
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43Define Your Target Market
Who, exactly, are your customers? Here's an in-depth investigation of how to define and calculate your ideal target market. This Microcast walks through a four-step process for defining standard and custom attributes of your customer and validating those attributes to arrive at a well-crafted target market definition for your business. Attributes, demographics, and psycho-graphics are explored in depth, including a look at the target markets of real businesses.
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44Step 1 - Define Standard Attributes - Demographics
We will walk you through each of the demographic attributes used to define your target market. We go into some detail so you can easily apply any of these attributes to your business.
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45Step 1 (con't) - Define Standard Attributes - More Demographics
We continue with this long list of demographic attributes to make it easy for you to define your target market. We go into some detail so you can easily apply any of these attributes to your business.
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46Step 1 (con't) - Define Standard Attributes - Psychographics
Now it is time to walk you through a great list of psychographic attributes that you can use to define your target market. After learning these, you can apply them to your business.
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47Step 2 - Develop Custom Attributes
Continue to refine your target market definition by developing a set of custom attributes that enables you to refine your target market even further.
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48Step 3 - Validation
An important step in developing an effective target market is validating your definition. Does your target market actually make sense given your other business strategies, like pricing or product?
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49Step 4 - Adjust Your Strategy
If your target market needs to be adjusted given your other business strategies, now is the time to do it. All your strategies must be in sync in order for your business to work.
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50Workshop - Developing Your Target Market
Time to put pen to paper—or fingers to keyboard. Take a look inside the worksheet that prepares you to create a clear target market description for your business plan. The key to success is taking the time necessary to deeply understand your business and be prepared to run it—use this workshop and worksheet to do just that.