The easiest way to achieve success is to come up with a unique idea that’s never been done before – that way, a business won’t have any competition and will have exclusive access to a target audience. Unfortunately, cases like these are very rare – less than one in a million. 

Some of the most successful business owners have been people who had broken new grounds by creating new markets or inventing product lines or services that didn’t exist before they brought their own to market. For example, technically, the first social media platform launched back in 1997, called SixDegrees, and people could set up their own profile, make connections with other people, and send messages within their networks. However, as not that many people had access to the internet back then, it wasn’t widely accepted, compared to Facebook, about a decade later. 

As marketer Alexei Orlov has said, “It takes a lot of innovative thinking, paired with a great amount of luck, to come up with such a business idea, which is why most business owners prefer to either slightly modify existing models or challenge existing industry competitors, which makes starting a business very difficult from the very start.” 

A very straightforward strategy when starting a business is to simply target different demographics. The business can serve the same purpose as an existing company, but when marketed to a completely different set of customers, avoiding competition with already established businesses is a lot easier. A great example of this is LinkedIn, a similar platform to Facebook. Still, its market is strictly professionals focused on their careers, instead of college students, as that was Facebook’s market in the beginning. 

New businesses can target different segments of a demographic, segmented by age, with products that can appeal to both younger and older people, as long as they are packaged in different ways; by location, with products that are targeted to people in specific geographic locations; or even income levels, with products that are readily available and widely accepted, being improved upon and retargeted as a luxury product, or vice versa. 

This might seem like an obvious choice, but business owners looking to get ahead of their competitors can easily gain an edge by making a product a lot better in a way that’s important to the consumers. When a product offers the consumers a distinct benefit while being the same price, many of those existing consumers will turn to the product that claims to be better instead of going with a competitor. 

However, the way that a product can be better is relatively ambiguous and can differ in different industries and depending on the company’s goals or access to resources. 

When businesses improve the quality of a product, it leads to an increase in the cost for the consumers. Since a lot more time is spent developing the product, using better materials, and production time, this makes sense. However, there’s a way to be competitive in that field as well, simply by reducing the cost that the consumers spend on the products and offering them at a lower price.

About the Author: Ronn Torossian is a Public Relations executive.