‘Tale Alimi: Creating a Unique Business Strategy

When I speak to business owners, I always like to find out why they chose the business they are doing and what makes them different from other players in the market. I often find out that they are building their business doing what they have seen another business doing.

This has led to a proliferation of what I call ‘me too’ strategy. Which simply means; I do it because others are doing it. The challenge with this is that your business would not stand out in anyway and therefore potential customers do not have any strong motivation to choose you instead of the competition.

In working with business owners, one of the first things I try to do is to guide them to identify what their uniqueness is so we can develop a unique strategy and a strong competitive advantage that would help them stand out and attract customers.

A few pointers in ensuring that you have a unique strategy are:

Identify what you (your business) are great at
I believe everyone has something that makes them stand out like how everyone’s finger print is different, the same applies to your business. Find what you are ‘great’ at. You can be good at customer service, good at production, good at pricing, but there is something that you are ‘great’ at and would easily make you stand out, identify what that is.

Build your strategy on your uniqueness
Once you have identified what that is, then build your business strategy around this.This would make it difficult for others to copy you exactly as you do it. That’s why a lot of food companies keep their receipes ‘secret’ because they know that is what makes them special and unique.

Identify an underserved segment in your industry and go full power in that segment
The best way to display your uniqueness in business is to an underserved segment. This is like giving well water to a village that has no water for a long time. A certain fast food company in Nigeria took their restaurants to highly populated low income areas and saw their business grow exponentially.

Scale your strategy
No matter how unique your strategy is, if you don’t have the capacity to scale it, you can loose your competitive advantage and a bigger player can come and do exactly what you are doing with more money and momentum and take the market from you.

Find your unique strategy and display it to your customers and your business would certainly be better for it. We provide this guided learning to take your business from ordinary to extraordinary at our business boot camp, you can check it out here.

Photo Credit: Dreamstime |  Edhar Yralaits