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Strong Competitive Edge Is Prime Revenue Stream
by Theresa Lütge-Smith
One way to make a greater footprint in your industry is by watching and learning from your rivals. Monitor your competitors closely. Knowing the level of their state of art can be extremely useful when planning your own marketing strategy. Though it sounds intriguing, competitive intelligence is simply the process of gathering and analyzing available public information about the activities and plans of competitors. The data used to study competitors comes from a variety of sources - the simplest of these are 'crawling' competitor websites to scrutinize their products and services, and subscribing to their online newsletter, as well as news feeds. It is relatively common to use these observation techniques to collect competitive information.
However, new technology solutions are entering real-time collaboration, conferencing and information-rich markets all the time, which make it even more imperative to maintain an overarching awareness of all that is happening in your particular industry. Webmasters need to capture first-hand, what motivates end-users - the real people making the buying decisions - to access one site above others. The collective knowledge of who your competitors are and what they are offering will help you evaluate new, innovative marketing and pricing approaches that are in sync with what customers really want. By entering the world of the consumer, you effectively share the consumption and shopping experience through observation and questioning.
After taking a tour around the Web in search of some innovative marketing ideas to extend the competitive edge, I discovered some new trends and ad models that have the potential of delivering strong revenue streams. They include the year's most talked about technology trends - social networking, blogging and broadband video. My search also revealed articles and interviews that inform us that banner advertising is passé and that e-mail marketing is equally obsolete. It's even being said that search engine marketing is beginning to get a bit long-in-the-tooth in Internet time.
So what do you need to know that will help you leap ahead of your competition? While the main aim of every business is still to put the right message across to the right customer at the right time, changing consumer trends are challenging webmasters to build a dynamic marketplace to communicate with customers and prospects. For instance, online social networks - also aptly known as meet-markets - are to my mind nothing more than viral and behavioral marketing strategies put to work, and a slight step-up from the job originally achieved by news groups. It's about like-minded people communicating and sharing information. Albeit, online marketers recognize that potential social networking offers to build a one-to-one relationship with customers, and establish a higher level of brand loyalty and repeat business. It also allows marketers to visually see who their customers know and what mutual connections they have; and provides the means to gauge how your products are perceived. Knowing these connections can help you find that key client, start a business relationship; identify consumer likes and dislikes and help you plan image-boosting campaigns.
Take Friendster (www.friendster.com) for example, one of the largest more recreational sites that have compiled a base of over 6.25 million members organically in the space of one year. Considering the dramatic viral growth of this and other buddy-oriented networks, the potential to run ads on these sites is tremendous. Similarly, webmasters should explore the opportunity to develop branding partnerships or even completely branded networks for marketing purposes. AT&T is already running ads on Friendster and a rotation of half-page ads for DirectTV Netflix. Webmasters should consider initiating their own branding opportunity by building a personalized social network that tie into viral growth marketing.
Besides promoting customer relationships, effective companies also focus on branding to gain competitive edge. While consumers about a decade ago understood a brand to be a company's product or service, consumers today perceive a brand as the sum total of all aspects of a particular company, including visual image, reputation, service, quality merchandise, promotion, and market positioning. It is therefore essential that the webmaster know all he can about his customers if he wants to deliver a customized message based on specific demographics. However, there are those who argue that branding is overrated and that customer turnover defeats the efforts to create long-term brand loyalty. In all fairness, brands continually face growing competition from global markets and must be ever vigilant to changes in consumer behavior if they wish to remain in the loop. Other marketing trends to extend the competitive edge are blogging and broadband video.
Blogging is a chronologically organized Web log, which is mainly composed of text, and published using simple software. Blogs or Weblogs have become part of the Internet landscape and provide an excellent way of attracting customers through up-to-date information and content. They also provide facilities for reciprocal contact with users and clients, which provide a further avenue for finding out more about your clients.
More than 50 million Americans have broadband Internet connections. With broadband's increasing popularity, other products on the market such as Streaming videos and Broadcast videos are becoming increasingly popular. Streaming videos play at a speed of 10 to 12 frames per second on a high-speed connection while Broadcast videos download entirely to the browser cache file before launching and playing at 30 frames per second, which is equal to TV quality. However, this method of advertising deserves to be explored in detail in a future column.
Once you've gathered relevant information about your competitors, compile a chart to compare yourself to each of your rivals. In what areas do you come up trumps? Which areas are in dire need of attention? What specific needs have been identified by customers and prospects? Do some serious brainstorming to highlight two or more areas that will significantly improve your competitive edge so that your company can stand out above the competition. Even if you identify only one area that will outstrip the competition, you will enhance your market share.
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