There is one simple building block for a successful competitive strategy: finding out what customers want and doing it better than anyone else. There is no substitute for this. No business can succeed without happy customers, a rule which requires that the successful competitor actually find out what customers do want. This is why we are constantly bombarded by satisfaction surveys when we buy anything online. The supplier wants to know whether you were happy, what you were looking for, the cause of any unhappiness, and whether or not you will recommend their products to your friends.
In consumer products, the successful competitor must think this way and do three things. First, he must create awareness of his product or nothing further will happen. Potential customers must know that you exist. This is why you often see advertising for websites on television, not campaigns for the products themselves. People have to know that you are out there.
Second, he must motivate the prospect to try it, or the prospect will not become a customer. The company seeking your business will try to capture you and find out about you. They will then appeal to you to try what they have to offer, building on what they have found out about you. Supermarkets assemble massive databases gathered from transactions at the till using loyalty cards. From this they know what to try to sell you via coupons and even in-store promotional materials.
And finally, he must motivate retrial: the product must be good enough that the customer wants to buy it again. This is the acid test. If the customer tries your product and doesn't like it and does not come back for more, you have largely failed. It's that simple.
In the case of services like Fiesta Sol’s business of wedding arranging and food catering, the requirements for success reflect these guidelines. In catering, they have managed to create awareness principally through good website design, but also selected advertising campaigns in targeted publications. Before the web, awareness was created solely through advertising, an often prohibitively expensive way to find your first customers. Now a good website can at least get you started. The website also plays a role in generating trial. The message on the website must be sufficiently enticing to generate clicks and enquiries, whether it is a catered dinner for 100 people or a wedding in a Marbella villa.
Retrial is the life blood in food catering. Customers must see the performance as exceptionally good and worth doing again. The corollary of retrial in the wedding planning business is a good reference (and hopefully not a return for a second marriage, at least not too soon!). Brides pleased with the wedding experience and the service provided by the wedding arranger will tell their friends and provide endorsements and testimonials. The FiestaSol website is replete with such compliments.
One final piece of advice. The great American poet and essayist, Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “What you do speaks so loud I cannot hear what you say." Don’t speak ill of your competitors. Your customer prospects will simply assume that you are struggling to catch up with a superior rival.
The bottom line is this. A great product, attuned to the needs and requirements of the customer, is the backbone of any business, large or small. Do everything you can to provide it.
