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COMPETITION IS BEST KEPT TO YOURSELF!
Are you 'playing golf' at work? Richard Behrens, Golf Grand Master, says, "Good golf is all in the mind....the golfer's own lower mind, and how the person perceives the situations s/he finds...on the course are the major reasons s/he suffers from...
Creativity, Innovation – Competition versus Collaboration
There is much confusion as to whether competition or collaboration is most beneficial to creativity and innovation. Though there are negatives to collaboration and it is not easy separating the effects of time pressure and group activity, in...
How To Hit The Competition Without Losing The Customer
Get over it! If you run any type of business, you're going to have competitors. Even if your product or service is a unique one, soon you'll have copycat products start surfacing. Competition is therefore just a fact of business life and one of the...
New Promotional Ideas That Work - Without Competition!
Find a "silent auction" or raffle going on, and contribute a product or service of yours. You will be listed as a contributor, "Donated by Joe's Company", and then it will have your contact information. If the prize is truly worthwhile, people...
SPYING ONLINE ... OR HOW TO OUT-PROMOTE YOUR COMPETITION ONLINE
Are you constantly loosing ground to your online competitors? Do they win all the sales, get all the great reviews and generally ooze success? Well now it is time to fight back. Now it is time to really start competing online. The funny thing not...
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Distinguish Your Business From The Competition
You followed time-honored online marketing techniques to the letter: you have a great web site, the site has a high search engine rank, and you created a compelling marketing message that showcases your unique selling proposition. Unfortunately, your competitors are reading the same playbook and are implementing the same marketing strategies. The net result is that a potential customer found your web site, but also found the sites of your most savvy competitors. How can you get a marketing edge in this situation?
Distinguishing your business from the competition is essential for growing your customer base. Here are three techniques that will give your business crucial marketing sparkle:
Distinguish your web site. Many entrepreneurs get a web site template and content from their parent company and use it as-is, without modifying anything at all. Since all of the representatives get exactly the same site template from the parent company, how are you different from all of the other representatives? There is nothing wrong with either the template or the content, and it is perfectly acceptable to use a cookie-cutter web site for selling to your existing customer base. However, to attract new customers, you must distinguish your business.
Provide superior customer service. Your customers might not be ready to buy the first time they visit your web site, but they are likely to have questions or concerns about your products or services. Make time to reply to their questions within 24 hours so that you can showcase your customer service. If you are not paying attention to them when they are potential customers, how much attention will they get once they are actual customers? Note that you must provide excellent post-sale customer service as well — stellar pre-sale service that becomes non-existent
after the payment has been processed is a great way to lose the customer you just acquired. Customer retention should be the cornerstone of your business strategy — acquiring a new customer is an order of magnitude more expensive that retaining an existing customer.
Have a clear and simple message. How many times have you met someone during a networking event, heard their 2 minute speech about their business, and still had no idea about what they were promoting? Worse yet, how many times have you visited a web site and had absolutely no idea what the web site was promoting? Do you know how to "leverage synergy of client-centered intellectual capital to achieve strategic dominance in the interactive state-space"? Neither do we. Make sure your web site states clearly what you offer and how to order your products. (We recently spent several minutes on a site wondering where the "buy" button was). If you offer a wide variety of products or services, list a few of the most popular ones on top-level pages, and link to additional items. It is better to tell your customers about two products and have them remember what they were than to tell them about 2,378 products and have them remember none.
Distinguishing your business from the competition is essential when you are marketing to potential clients. It will mean the difference between closing a sale and losing that sale to a competitor.
About the Author
Avocado Consulting, Inc offers a complete range of innovative consulting services that enable businesses to leverage the full power of the Internet. We help your business thrive by providing superior online marketing services, user-friendly web design, and innovative technical consulting. Copyright © Avocado Consulting, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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