How to Stay Ahead of the Competition?

The marketing domain is flooded with numerous small businesses who are trying really hard to establish themselves as a reputed brand. If you have a strong customer base for your business the task of building a brand image becomes much easier. But if you’re still working on acquiring a customer base, these marketing tactics come in very handy.

Here are some few pointers to stay on top of marketing space:

Work on expanding your customer base

To begin with, identify the type of customers that you want to target. Use marketing tools and analytical tools that tell you about the niche specific audience that are the actual target of your business. Keep in mind the problem you are solving and who is looking for that kind of a solution.

Try identifying more than one type of target audience and market to them. Analyze how the new market responds to your marketing and business, this will allow you to test new waters and expand your customer base.

Give away freebies to existing customers via contest

Freebies are a customer’s all-time favorite. Free advice, free coupons, free giveaways, or any freebie always impacts the user more than anything else. Try using this marketing tactic to play along with the psyche of the users.

As a customer one is always attracted to service or products for which users are not charged. This is the basic human psychology, which successful and experienced marketers are using to attract a majority of the customers to their business.

Think about what you can offer for free to your customers to get a foot in the door and build upon that.

Choose the right marketing tools

Today’s market is technology driven. Hence to stay ahead in today’s marketing domain one needs to know about the latest and updated technologies. Marketing tool like keyhole gives us a specific idea about the hashtags that are more popular and their effectiveness in various demographics.

Research the various marketing tools that can help attract a million users to your business. Weigh out the pros and cons of each tool and narrow down on one most suitable to you. We availing the free trails most of these tools offer to really get a feel for which tool works better for you.

Stay updated on latest news

As a business, you should share news about the latest happenings and technologies related to your industry that might affect the lives of the customers. Readers would always be more inclined towards the business that keeps them updated about the latest technologies.

Not only does keeping up with the news help you stay ahead of the curve, it helps your customers stay ahead as well.

Be innovative

No one is ever looking at something that is boring.

Normally business talk about their services and business but what makes a brand stand out is when the brand comes up with new stuff to grab its customer’s attention. Make sure when you as a brand talk about services, you are able to keep your reader’s attention pinned to your website.

To be unique and creative you need to know how your customer behaves, think of how you want them to behave and then build the path to that goal. Test your website, app, ads etc. till you hit that sweet spot of being innovative and delivering results.

Study your competitor

You definitely don’t want to copy your competitor’s marketing strategy, but if you look closer you will come to know about the strategies they are adopting to stay connected with their niche specific audience. Understand in detail what all keywords they are using to target their specific audience. Notice the marketing strategies that they are using to offer their services and products. Once you know your competitor’s marketing strategy you have an extra point in your favor. So keep an eye on your competitor for the marketing strategy of your business.

Video marketing

Check out any social media channel and you shall see that video marketing is in trend. Videos have more engagement as compared to images. Businesses need to understand the importance of sharing short videos.  

Take the time to devise a strategy in this area and follow through with it. Start small, get some practice under your belt, and build from there. This trend is here to stay.

Monitor your USP

Every successful business has a clear USP (unique selling proposition) which in turn helps customers differentiate between the types of business and its various services and products that it offers. A good example of this is Domino’s unique selling proposition that says “Get hot and fresh pizza delivered at your doorsteps.”

Being able to send your business proposition across to your customers is the real tactic in marketing space. They should be able to identify instantly what you have to offer and why it’s such a good deal. Dig deep to identify what your USP is; think of the problems you solve, what truly makes your product/service unique and something that the customer just can’t pass on.

A business reaches the top of the ladder of success if everything is in its favor and if it’s able to attract and retain customers. Hence while drafting marketing strategies for small business, one must keep all these points in mind. Online marketers wisely understand the psyche of the customers.

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