The nature of business competition is clearly more unpredictable than ever before. The most successful companies strive to inspire and delight customers in order to stand out. Success does not come from selling products, services, or techniques – it comes from providing experiences.
An excellent product or service and a good price-performance ratio alone is not enough. Customer experience and innovation are the most essential qualities todays in markets for building a competitive advantage. A company’s desire and capability to build a creative culture of innovation is critical to stay ahead of competitors – it’s critical to stay alive.
Customer experience and innovation are the new black
In today’s market, competitive advantage can vanish almost over night as products and services can be quickly copied. Still – while your product and/or service is the most critical factor in your success, your brand is your most valuable asset. The product or service is the commodity, the brand is the personality. Products and services can be copied, but a brand is unique.
Business competition has moved strongly towards emotional direction, such as how a customer feels about your brand. Increasingly often, people value an all-encompassing branded experience above all else. Managing a comprehensive branded experience is the key to standing out against your competition.
In order to create a unique branded experience, you must understand the big picture and pay attention to details. Every last detail – Even the smallest ones. Build and cultivate the brand as a whole. Be honest, meaningful, understandable, and inspiring. This will draw committed clients, partners, and employees to your brand. It will make you memorable and give your clients a reason to come back again and again.
The financial benefits with customers comprehensive branded experience are enormous. Create consumer expectations and exceed them, building excitement about your brand. In the end, this will lead to brand loyalty and positive word of mouth – and many times a higher instance for repurchase of you products and services.
On the other hand, stability may be considered ‘dead’ – not competitive advantage, it’s just not sustainable anymore.
True success can only originate from a thorough understanding of your business, a will to break your conventions and a desire to create greater value. The most fundamental ability is to understand and define the true needs of the clients.
To achieve a competitive advantage, a company should be creating innovative and valuable customer experiences and use all the best practices for implementation in order to create more overall value than competitors do. Superior value is created with a tailored customer experience and innovation offering designed specifically for every segment of the market.
What companies really have to be aware of, is that a competitive advantage is no longer sustainable and theirs to keep for years to come. Because of today’s market and technology, their competitors can catch them in no time. Innovation is not just what businesses have to think about on day one – but every day.
We provenly can, and we very much like to produce some significantly unfair competitive advantage for your business as well. If you are in to that – let’s talk.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Juha is a husband and father, passionate thinker, doer and collaborator, world class people connector, innovator in business development, creative branding and marketing expert and a founder of Pure Innovation company. He has achieved success working for national and international organizations, while being rewarded more than 30 time both nationally and internationally with awards such as Cannes Lions, Clio, New York Festival, Rebrand 100, etc.