How big is your moat? It may not be as simple as it used to be.
The Moat strategy has never been needed more. However, creating and growing a moat is becoming increasingly complex.
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A moat is an economic term that is used as a strategy to find your differentiated, ownable value proposition, create a market position around it and continually attempt to widen it. This has been used for decades in many different industries; leveraging scale, production efficiency and advertising to create and defend a market position for many companies. However, with the shifting consumer behaviors and advancements in technology, this strategy is becoming harder and harder to implement; even though it’s still needed.
“How do you compete against a true fanatic? You can only try to build the best possible moat and continuously attempt to widen it.”
Building a moat starts with fully defining the thing that your brand, product or service can do for your consumers that no other company in the world can do. Then exploit that by building a business and experience around that. With this knowledge, you can leverage the shifting consumer experiences and advancing technologies to truly build a unique, personalized business for each of your consumers.
This will manifest in many different ways, but should include:
Omnichannel Journeys
How does your value proposition come to life across channel? Moats used to include a single distribution and communication model. Now we have to understand how we can crate a network or ecosystem of moats that deliver a holistic market position for the consumer and the business.
Integrated Experiences
Expanding on the omnichannel journeys is the process of integrating these experiences together. How does a consumer who starts researching and shopping online get transferred and treated in a store? This is becoming increasingly important for consumers and a major opportunity to defend and widen your company’s market position.
Progressive Relationships
How well do you know your consumer and what is their lifetime value? Moving beyond an acquisition mindset and into a lifetime value mindset provides your company the opportunity to look at the marketplace a little differently. The opportunity is in the progressive value of a relationship than in a single, one-time purchase.
How’s your moat? Let’s chat.