In the digital era, customers have access to more varied options of products or services, which they are looking for. As a result, businesses are facing more fierce competition. The situation is more difficult for startups that have limited financial resources and less experience in dealing with established competitors. As a result, the competitive advantages, which the company has, will evaporate quickly.

Ways on How to Survive Tight Competition

If they want to stay in business, startups have no choice but to find ways on how to survive tight competition. A lesson from Criteo (CRTO) in dealing with the competition may inspire startups. one of the leaders in ad-tech market, CRTO has successfully set a clear vision to be a leader in providing the customers with data-driven system to boost their sales. The following are some strategies used by CRTO as ways on how to survive tight competition:

On Going Innovation

instead of targeting large markets or big companies, the company focuses on areas, in which it can benefit the most. For some years, the company focuses on optimizing data related things, such as cost of sales, mobile marketing, basket sizes, conversion, and mobile marketing. With innovation, you can be different from the mainstream. This is how you attract attentions from potential customers. Of course, innovation needs huge resources, but the results will be worth.

Saying ‘No’

Actually, such process has been used by Amazon – the largest marketplace right now. The company takes the risk of cutting one aspects that do not benefit it anymore. Criteo did with Beacon. The company used Beacon – device for retail store for years. It conducted repeated tests for a couple of times, but they did not work. As a result, the company had to make a decision to stop it.

A similar case happened when it bought an email company, which was at first aimed for retargeting. After few years, the company realized that it was a dead weight, which only took many resources without promising future. Yes, the company decided to stop the unit before it made further damages.

Looking at Pitfalls

The startups frequently become the targets of a larger competitor. Criteo had been in such a situation. The company took the advantage from the fact that the competitor was too ambitious to fight the startups. It spent a little for promoting the service. In this way, the company did not lose much even if the competitor successful got the market. On the other hand, when the efforts failed, the competitor would lose much.

Building Loyal Customer Base

Criteo treated the customer base as the one of the keys on how to survive tight competition. Its benefits included large data set and loyal customers. It went all-in in promoting this two benefits and gain advantages from them. By recognizing the competitive advantages, startups can do necessary efforts to win even in the fierce condition.

Those ways on how to survive tight competition worked for Criteo. This was evident from its promising market hit and stable business growth. Of course, every business has to do some adaptation.