Switching on creativity for the Brighton massage Industry - Part 2

As mentioned on our previous article massage practices in Brighton luck a certain creativity that would have in the long run enabled them to establish Brighton as one of the key places in South East for massage treatments.

Massage in Brighton

The most effective type of creativity in business is focused creativity in other words an insightful approach that is based on concrete evidence and data. Creativity will then act as a lever for differentiating ones’ business from the competition.

Differentiating  ones business/practice requires a fundamental understanding of the following elements,  becoming aware of these elements and how they interact with each other provides a solid base for devising a business strategy:

• Operating environment – this can be defined as the environment a practice is operating in, in other words the city of Brighton in terms of the local economy, infrastructure and relevant government policies  
• Customers – understanding of customer segments and behavioral pattern
• Competition –analyzing competition and their capabilities
• Suppliers – every business has a key set of suppliers from the company that supplies massage oils to therapists that might work for the practice, these are all considered supplies that a practice requires in order to operate effectively.
• Resources – this type of analysis concentrates on the type of resources ( tech capabilities, staff, processes, managerial now-how etc ) that a business might have at its disposal.

There are various tools that can assist even the untrained to structure this type of research such as a Porter’s 5 Forces model and SWAT analysis. Obtaining the data to plug in into these tools might be harder to obtain but its well worth the effort as it can lead to insights that will ensure your business reaches the Holy Grail that every business out there is seeking consciously or unconsciously and that is a sustainable competitive advantage ( SCA) against ones’ competition. 

Spa in Brighton

To phrase it slightly differently, a SCA is what you can do as a business that nobody else ( at a particular cost and quality) in your market can emulate. This type of advantage is what giants are build on like Microsoft, Apple, Coca Cola American Express and other great brands.

Once a good understanding of the above elements has been obtained then it’s time to mix it up. Use a SWOT analysis to  categorize your findings. The SWOT analysis will provide the strengths of the business that you need to invest further, the weaknesses that you need to handle in order to avoid  risks, the opportunities that you need to take advantage of and the threats that you need to remediate immediately.

A very good example of the above is a business that identifies the qualifications of its therapists are superior to its competitors so it pays extra attention in making customers aware of it as that is considered a strength/advantage, on the other hand a weakness can be the lack of a web presence which  requires attention as its a certain weakness when taking into account consumer behavior and trends. An opportunity can be in the form of training and expanding the repertoire of treatments offered and a threat can be the lack of insurance for the treatments offered.

Beauty in Brighton

Join us on our third installment were we discuss how to match your business capabilities and resources with the operating environment and build sustainable competitive advantage in the massage treatments market.