Market Mistake #8 – Not using marketing arbitrage

Arbitrage is defined as:

The simultaneous buying and selling in different markets so as to profit by the difference in price, traffic in bills of exchange, stocks and shares

A mouthful of hokey pokey, right? The arbitrage I’m talking about however, has nothing to do with stocks, shares or bills of exchange. It refers to borrowing, adapting and using already proven ways to eek out market share from your competitors. Specifically it means that you should take the competitive advantage or unique selling proposition of industry leaders in other countries and start to use it as your own. 

Here’s how to do it:

Step 1 – Go to google canada, google uk or google australia and type in your industry (I would for example type marketing consulting into the above search engines)

Step 2 – Look at the web links, headlines, first couple of sentences, opt in boxes and on the ‘why us’ and ‘about’ pages of those websites

Step 3 – See if you can find a proposition that’s unique, compelling or intriguing

Once you’ve done a bit of research you will discover what specific promises or propositions are used over and over again in different countries by different leading industry professionals.


Think about it. Most of these folks are half a world away from each other – yet their propositions may have similar success in their parts of the world. 

Let me give you an example. A very strong unique selling proposition in the early days came from the pizza industry. Domino’s pizza was the first to coin the infamous position: “hot, tasty pizza delivered in 30 minutes or less or it’s free”. A local south african company was very successful in adapting Domino’s competitive advantage (exactly word for word) to gain ground locally. 

My point is this: you don’t have to guess or be creative to forge your own competitive advantage. Simply adapt, modify or use what’s already working. No matter how strong you think your unique selling proposition is – it has to be tested first. It has to matter to your customer. 

Therefore, you can’t go wrong by using a proven competitive advantage (that’s been field tested and proven over and over again) in your own type of industry.

But this is just the very small tip of the iceberg. You can use this marketing arbitrage concept to research product ideas, marketing strategies/funnels, gather industry data to pre-empt competition (a very sophisticated marketing strategy), get email marketing sequences, compare fees … and the list goes on. 

Remember…

“Every minute you spend on planning will save you 10 minutes and 10 dollars on execution” –Brian Tracy

So there. Peace.

P.S How do you know you’ve found the right USP/product idea/competitive advantage etcetera? As soon as you start to read and go “hmm well that’s interesting” or “gee I’ve never thought about it in this way”. Or “Wow, I want to buy this now”. Once you’ve struck gold, remember to adapt, use and model your new USP/product idea/competitive advantage for your business.