Know-How Exchange : Strategy

Dafne,

I think you need to go all the way back to your business plan and overall marketing strategy. Get out the SWOT analysis and review your notes from the interviews you conducted among prospective customers. Then look critically at your positioning statement.

What is the unique competitive advantage that made you think you had a chance to succeed in this very competitive environment? That should tell you what you have to do. If you never went through that exercise in the beginning, then now is the time to do it.

The question should not be "How to stand out in a saturated market?" but "Do we bring anything to the party that will make us different from and better than the folks who are out there now?"

Trying harder and "caring" are not competitive advantages. Everybody claims they do that, and some even do. You need to have a sustainable competitive advantage, or you need to be the low-cost provider and compete on price. (That's not such a great strategy either, but it is certainly an alternative.)

The fact that you're asking for help standing out in the crowd suggests that perhaps you didn't think the business proposition through enough in the beginning. If that's the case, you can do yourself a HUGE favor by slowing down and laying that foundation now ... before you get too deeply into a de facto business plan that doesn't stand up to close scrutiny.