How does your business stand out against the competition?

Local Impact logo (Image: Archant)

In life we can be certain of death and taxes, in business we can also be certain of competition (some businesses do also get away with the whole tax thing).

I am sure that there are businesses out there with competitors offering the same service, the same expertise and sometimes even the exact same product. Potential customers also don’t have to go that far to find the competition as Google does such a good job of bringing them all together in search results.

In order to stand out when people are comparing businesses, a business needs all of its marketing ducks in a row. It needs a strong and recognisable brand, it needs visibility online with great continuity between its website and social media. A business needs to give potential customers a great experience from beginning to end.

On top of all of this though a business needs to know when (and how) to make an offer its potential customers can’t refuse.

One really good tip is to only make an offer to people who are interested in what you do and make the offer specific. What I mean by this is only show your 10% off widgets offer to people who have been on the widget page of your website, only send the buy one get one free offer to people who have downloaded your widget brochure and so on. It might sound obvious but an offer is much more effective if it is made to an audience of interested people.

PPC adverts, email marketing, online display retargeting, direct mail and even digital geo fencing are all ways a business can get its offer to these super responsive people. Using these delivery methods with a great offer is an excellent way of standing out from the crowd right at the point a potential customer is choosing who to buy from.

It sounds simplistic but this approach does work. If you are interested in understanding the detail of how we do this check out our website, in particular the page titled ‘how do you stand out against your competition?’