How to Compete on Content
By Christopher Willis
ResultsThe Company's differentiation strategy is freshly minted, so significant financial and market share results are still accumulating. One immediate result is that of public validation of our leadership from the major financial services information providers. The company is partnering with content providers on joint marketing programs, building a defensible competitive barrier with referrals, solution "hooks" to the information content, and co-branding.
Lessons Learned
The first step in the Company's differentiation strategy development process actually took place in a classroom at the Caltech Industrial Relations Center during the Strategic Marketing course. The small group exercise experience of discussing the Company's whole product offering, its traditional differentiation, and recent price pressure from high volume horizontal competitors was eye-opening. Peers with high tech marketing experience, but from outside my industry segment, intuitively took the view of the customer. From this outside customer view it became immediately obvious that we had been selling an IT benefit of time savings with our integrated package, but that opportunities for future differentiation lay in the actual business value delivered by the technology.
