If you are new to Internet marketing or you are struggling to attract customers to your website, the challenges and tasks you face online can seem daunting.
The Internet is a very competitive world and so many small businesses find it hard to make their mark online. For that reason, we have compiled a list of proven strategies that will immediately help your online business and make your website stand out in a competitive crowd.
Read on to learn how to stand out from your website’s competitors:
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Know Who You and Your Company Are
The best brands in the world know themselves and their business inside out. They know their strengths, their weaknesses, their successes, their failures – and they know not only where they are now, but also where they’re going in the future. Their route is well mapped out and they have a clear vision of what they want to achieve. A successful brand is one with one foot planted firmly in the present that also knows where to place the other foot in the future. You only get to this point by taking a true audit of everything you do analyzing both your failures and successes.
Know Your Competitors Inside Out
Keep an eye on your competitors and watch how they run their online business. What do they do right? Is there anything they’re offering that you aren’t? When thinking in terms of consumer experience, what can your competitors offer that you can’t?
Once you understand the reason behind why people aren’t choosing to buy from you instead of them, it’s much easier to fix any holes in your website or product offerings that are holding you back.
Decide What Makes YOUR Business Different
Set yourself apart from your competition. Notice how the websites and brands that you admire do things differently than everybody else and this is why you like them. They offer what’s called a “unique selling proposition” or USP. Finding your USP requires you to take a serious look at your business and honing in on that one item or trait that separates you from your competition. If you don’t have one, create it. Decide what makes your business different…and better.
Be a Specialist
You simply can’t afford to try to be all things to all people on the Internet. You need to decide which area you excel in a become an authority and expert in that niche.
Don’t Over-complicate Things
When it comes to your online business, keep things simple. Thee are two main ways you can do this. The first is by making your product or service easily to understand at a glance. If the average consumer doesn’t immediately grasp what it is that you are offering or what you do, you’re losing customers.
The second way revolves around the whole user experience. Do you make your customers jump through hoops at the check out in order to buy your product? If so, you will be losing customers. Keep it simple and you will get more sales.
Re-Invest in Your Brand
A number of online business owners do well, but they fail to reinvest some of their profits back into their brands in order to grow. There are always things you can make better, whether it’s enhancing your product design, user experience or additional product offerings so don’t rest on your laurels and ensure that you re-invest in order to protect your brand and business.
Solve Your Customers Problems
The best products and services are those that solve problems and make their customers lives easier. No matter what niche you’re in, there are pain points that you must point out to your potential customers in order to create the products or service offerings that will make their life easier. Solve the problem and watch your profits soar.
Hire the Experts
You can’t be a good at everything. At some point, your web-based business is going to need additional help. And when it comes to hiring, you need to ask yourself whether your candidates truly have the skills to take your business to the next level. If not, then chose somebody who can deliver the results that you want.
Keep Them Onboard
Keeping your employees and outsourced staff happy has been shown to increase productivity, as well as decrease stress and turnover. Once you find good employees, it’s always cheaper to retain them than to go through the process of finding others, training them, and then hoping they stick around.
Make Bold Guarantees
Display bold guarantees that get people’s attention. While you should never offer empty promises or guarantees you can’t meet, bold statements are very powerful and grab your visitor’s attention. It is important to remember that if you can’t deliver what you promise, don’t say it.
Track both Your Success…. and Failures
It’s easy to document and learn from the things you did well. What’s much harder – but much more important – is the ability to document your failures. Having a list of things you did wrong makes you more likely to learn from the mistake, rather than repeating it. In fact, mistakes are often the best thing that could happen to a business. Success doesn’t teach the same way failure does. As Henry Ford once said, “The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.”
Be Open and Transparent
The Internet gives you an opportunity to engage with your customers like never before. Let your customers take a peek behind the screen, and show them that you’re willing to share how you do things. Customers feel safer and more loyal to brands that they feel aren’t hiding anything. By being open and transparent, you will create a loyal customer for life.
Don’t Be Like Everybody Else …Be Innovative
Go ahead; be different and innovative. If you do something differently, your business will get noticed and talked about. Apple revolutionized the way in which we listen to music, use our mobiles and introduced a whole new way to access the Internet via tablets. The result? A bump in revenue so large that they became one of the most successful companies on the planet. Think of ways that your business can stand out.
Test, Test, Test…and Test Again
The most successful companies are ones that are always testing new ideas. Even if you’re just rolling out a specific feature to a certain segment in order to gather feedback, you should always be testing. You can’t be innovative if you’re afraid to fail, and you’ll never know if a feature will be a success unless you put it out in front of your market. Allow customers and subscribers to test and provide feedback on your new products and services.
Ask For Referrals
This is very basic advice, but so many online business owners often forget to ask for the referral. It’s a silly mistake to make as it’s easier than ever to get a referral online. The sale should never stop with the current customer. Ask for a Tweet or a Facebook status update in exchange for a freebie or discount. It’s that easy.
The Internet opens up new doors that we’ve never seen before in business and have created a level playing field so that small businesses can easily compete with the global companies online.
Those companies that are making the money are the ones that are willing to be different from their competitors in order to deliver a better product or service than those around them.
In summary
The secret is to keep it simple. Listen to your customers, respect them, and find ways to differentiate yourself from everyone else. Follow these rules and you’ll see an increase in sales in no time. Your website will stand out in a very competitive crowd, no matter what niche you are in.
Don’t just stop there. As an Internet marketing company that specializes in helping small businesses just like yours make a real impact on the Internet and reach a much wider audience of customers eager to buy your products and services, contact us today to discover who we can transform your Internet marketing efforts.
