John Bradley Jackson asked:




A Sustainable Competitive Advantage (SCA) is a unique offering that is valued by your customer and is not available from the competition. It is not what you think it is or what you want it to be. It is what your customer believes and that is what counts. This perception is everything.

Your SCA is made up distinctive competencies, which are unique attributes or benefits that are valued by the customer. Simply stated, this means that you do different things, or that you do things differently from your competition. These distinctive competencies are so valuable to your customer that they will choose your offering instead of the competition’s offering. These benefits could be unique product features, product design, method of delivery, or even your brand.

An example of doing things differently is Starbucks. They serve coffee, which is hardly unique, but they make the coffee buying experience almost a lifestyle. Have you seen the lines at this place? And, people go to Starbucks just to hang out. An example of doing different things might be MySpace; although not the first social networking site, they targeted the younger crowd and created an environment to connect and express yourself with 100 million other individuals.

A competitive advantage is sustainable if others can’t copy it or deliver the same thing, or if the cost or the time to develop a competing solution is very significant. Being first to market may provide a competitive advantage in the short run, but it is seldom sustainable.

To determine your SCA, list your distinctive competencies, which are the unique attributes or benefits that are valued by your customers. Then list your chief competitor’s distinctive competencies. Compare both lists. Delete the attributes or benefits from your list that you share with your competitor since they are not truly unique. The remaining items on your list make up your competitive advantage.

Next, ask yourself is it sustainable? Can this competitive advantage be duplicated and, if so, how soon? If your competitive advantage is easily cloned, then you had better come up with some new attributes because you are not alone.

Remember, only dead fish swim with the current.

John Bradley Jackson

niche+marketing

Ken Mathie asked:




Niche marketing. You hear this term thrown around like a sack of potatoes day in and day out. People use it, many times to impress others with their knowledge of Internet marketing, but sometimes to actually convey some real meaning and content to another. Hopefully, what you’re about to read will fall in the category of the latter and you’ll actually learn something after reading this and the other articles on niche marketing.

So, just what is a niche? Well, the definition is actually quite simple. A niche is a certain segment of the population where you intend to concentrate your efforts. For example. You have decided, for whatever reason, that you want to sell health related products. You’ve done your research and have discovered that a good number of the people in this world are sick in some way. So selling health related products would be a general niche. Now, you could leave your niche at this if you had, say, a wholesaler who could supply you with a number of health related products. But maybe you can’t get your hands on everything from soup to nuts related to healthcare and only have access to a few items. It may be a good idea to narrow your general niche down to a more specific niche, such as acne cures. If you have got a good home remedy for acne written up in ebook form, this could turn into a big seller and you don’t have to worry about carrying a lot of inventory. You’ve narrowed down your niche to one specific item.

The first question you might be tempted to ask is, “Why concentrate on just one niche?” The answer is simple to explain but sometimes hard to understand. The problem with understanding the answer is that many people have the philosophy of throwing as many things up against the wall in an effort to see if any of them stick. In other words, they try to market anything and everything. The problem with that way of thinking is the reason why you DO want to concentrate on a particular niche.

By concentrating on one niche you are more focused. Your web site or sales page has one goal and one goal only. To sell xyz product and nothing else. This makes you an “expert” in this area and the buying public will have more respect for you. Think about it. Dell Computers doesn’t try to sell diapers. They do well enough just selling computers.

Another reason you want to concentrate on one niche is because of advertising costs. When you’re promoting just one product or service, you can put all your advertising dollars into that one product or service and have the best chance of making sales. If you try to sell everything under the sun you end up splitting your available funds into so many different areas that you can’t effectively promote any of them. This is not to say that you can’t have more than one niche. Most likely after you create your first niche product and become profitable with it, you can take some of those profits and pick another niche. So say you are selling acne cures. You can then maybe branch out after a while and sell cold sore cures. Eventually, you will be involved in several niches, remembering to keep each one as a separate business and sales page.

Niche marketing is the most targeted marketing there is, and with proper research, can be the most profitable.

niche+marketing