How to Stand Out from the Competition

Have you tried marketing to potential customers and you are asked how your products/services are different from your competitors?

Well, we get that almost all the time. Especially when they’d have to migrate from other accounting software to ours. They’d be like:

“Why should I move from this to yours, when they are almost the same?”

By identifying who our competitors are, evaluating their processes and constantly analyzing them, we are able to point out what differentiates us from them, even though, we are in the same industry.

We study our competitors, not to do what they do or thread on the paths they have already cleared out, but to sort out ways to do better and carve a niche for ourselves.

Before you can do this, you must be able to:

Know Your Competitors

It is impossible to evaluate your competitors without knowing who they are. Before you start a business, chances are that there were other businesses in the same industry before yours. When you are fully set-up, more chances are that, many more will come after. Hence, it is not enough to analyse your predecessors and contemporaries, rather, make preparations for those that are even yet to launch.

Evaluate them

Now that you know who your competitors are, the evaluation process can fully begin.

With that being said, here are the 5 ways your competitors can make you prosper.

Customer Support

On an average, how long does it take your customer support team to respond to an email? How long to do your customers have to wait on the telephone line to make a quick enquiry? You may have all the answers to these, but can you say the same about your competitors?

Because these customers have other priorities than holding the line and waiting endlessly for an email from your company, they may likely move on to one of your competitors. Mayhap, the end result may be of a lesser value, a connection has been made. Therefore, it is safe to say, you should know your competitors’ response times and do better than them.

Social Media

If, by now, you don’t have a business page on social media, you are 10 steps behind your competitors. Spend quality time on your competitors’s pages and see how often they post, how engaging their posts are. How many followers do they have? Do they have an active social media presence? Do they promote their customers’ businesses? (If your industry is B2B). How often do they do campaigns? How many likes and comments do they have a regular? What kind of post always carries the highest amount of likes and comments?

Via social media, you also get to know what your competitors’ customers are saying about them. Are they satisfied with their products/services? What major complaints do they usually have? Do these customers get responses from your competitors?

Analyzing your competitors’ social media pages gives you an insight of what gets social media users engaged when it comes to your business industry. Not only that, you get to know what your competitors are up to as well as their next move; as a result of promotions and publicity going on on their pages.

Website

A business website is as important as a retail store. Now, retailers are seeing the need to own a website, as this allows customers unable to walk into the store, place their orders online via social media dm’s or website. It is equally essential you invest in your website, even as a startup. It may cost a lot, but in the long run, it will worth every penny.

Do you already have a website? Compare it to your competitors’. When doing this, look out for the layout, the picture quality of the images, navigation, content. How fast is it to access? What caught your attention the first time you viewed the website? How well is their business portrayed on their website?

Consider if these websites have blogs? If they don’t, you can go ahead and start yours. For instance, if your customers/target audience are photographers, you can dish out tips and tricks on photography: How to make use of reflections. How to prevent blurry pictures.

I once compared two websites and at first glance, I knew which I’d buy from. This is not to say that my choice has the best quality, but the fact that they were able to pay so much attention to details regarding their website, blew me away. I’m sure I’m not the only one that has ever done that. Who knows, maybe that is why your competitors have more customer than you?

Better Marketing Strategies

While planning your marketing strategies, product and price review, put into consideration your competitors’ customer reviews you had gathered from their websites and social media platforms. Turn it around to your advantage; by improving on these products/services. You’d get yourself tons of customers in no time.

What to Do Better

Having analyzed and evaluated your competitors, you can then make certain decisions based on the errors you have pointed out during the course of the evaluation process.

You have been able to identify certain errors pertaining to their social media platforms, blogs, websites, marketing strategies, reviewing their products/services, etc. Based on these factors, you are able to figure out what may or may not work out for you, make certain decisions, do certain things right which may be done wrong if your competitors had not gone that route and failed.

Evaluating your competitors is not to do what they or what they don’t, but to identify ways to do them better.