How to outcompete your competitors
Wherever you market, whatever your industry or the size of your business, it is always good to check out your competition.
Keep things in perspective and don’t make get obsessive about it but keeping an eye on the competitors in your field can spur you on to grow and improve your company.
The business world can be a battle at times, and if you want to be an industry leader, you need to be aware of how other businesses are marketing, what they do to engage with their customers and where they do it. Your observations will help you devise a better strategy.
Who are your competitors?
Anyone marketing the same products or service to you are your direct competitors and rest assured that your customers will be comparing what they offer in comparison with you, so it’s good to know what they are doing. They will certainly be checking your business out.
Companies that may offer an alternative purchase, but target the same prospects in the same digital marketing arena, are your indirect competitors, for example tea and orange juice are indirect competitors.
Gather insights
There are various ways to collect information on your competitors and here are a few of our suggestions:
Check out their search engine ranking
It may seem obvious, but one of the first things to do is to search online for a product or service you provide and compare where your website is ranked by the search engines, in comparison with other companies. Also consider those companies who you or your sales team come across.
Try to ascertain why they are ranking more highly than your website, if they do. Do they have a sleek or faster loading website? Are they regularly publishing blogs? Do they post consistently on their social media?
Devise an unbeatable USP and marketing plan
Do your market research on your direct competitors and come up with a more attractive USP that will drive more traffic to your website.
By creating a winning marketing strategy that will outmanoeuvre theirs, you can show off your expertise and creative powers to outshine them by miles.
Conduct a customer survey
Your customers will have evaluated the firms offering what they were looking for, so after a sale, it is worthwhile asking them to give you feedback by answering a few questions in a survey.
You could also offer them an incentive for filling it out, for example a discount off their next purchase. Don’t forget to ask them why they chose your business over your competitors.
Check out their creative assets
If your competitors promote themselves by running advertisements on Facebook, you can check out what they have been doing by using the Page Transparency feature.
This is a great way of finding inspiration to help you come up with a more alluring advertisements and creative assets, linked to your unique branding.
Social media
The surge in social media marketing means you will be left behind in the race, if you don’t participate.
It’s vital to promote your profile, manage your reputation, as well as observe and analyse what your competitors are up to.
There are numerous uses for social media, apart from posting and advertising. You can conduct polls to research customer preferences, use it for product research, brand engagements, to host competitions and to raise your status as a market influencer.
Make it a regular task on your calendar to spend time analysing your data, to help you work towards providing a better customer experience.
If you need some help out-competing your competitors with your digital marketing, your brand, SEO, advertising or AdWords, why not book a 30 minute discovery Zoom meeting here:
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