ExecutiveChronicles | Tips For Differentiating Yourself From Your Competitors | One of the most difficult tasks a business owner will need to do is differentiate their business from that of their competitors. Once you can do this successfully, you’ll find more customers, make more sales, make more profit, and ultimately be able to grow your business. If you can’t do it, you’ll stagnate or, worse, you’ll have to close altogether.
Yet working out how to make yourself different from your competitors isn’t always easy, especially when you are focused on your own business and can’t necessarily see beyond it. There are ways it can be done, however. Read on to find out more.
Have A Real USP
Your USP – unique selling proposition – is what is going to make you stand out the most. It’s something everyone should know about, and once you know what it is, you need to talk about it on all your marketing, your website and blog, your social media, and so on. This is the thing that you do and no one else does, so it’s crucial to make it interesting, make it useful to your customers, and to make it easy for you to keep consistent.
There are many different options you can consider, but start with what you already do. Is there anything you do that no one else does? That could be your USP. Perhaps you have a store where you play music solutions for business to keep your customers and staff happy, but your competitors don’t have a store at all and only work online. This is different enough to be your USP. What else could your USP be?
Do Business Differently
Now it’s time to take a much closer look at how your competitors conduct their business. What is their sales process like? How do they treat their customers? What is their level of customer service? Do they offer any incentives? It’s crucial to understand as much as possible about how they work because this will allow you to be different.
Although it won’t make sense to do things differently to your customers just for the sake of it, it does make sense if you can do so and make it work. This is why you shouldn’t just flip everything your competitors are doing on its head and do the opposite; you should look at what they are doing and create your own way of doing it that is different enough to be noticed, but that won’t harm your business at all.
Solve Your Customers’ Problems
If you are going to be successful and if you want your business to last for a long time, you need to come up with ways to solve your customers’ problems. This is important no matter what competition you might have, but if it can elevate you in the eyes of your customers, then it’s even more important to get it right.
The first thing to consider is the products you’re selling. Do they actually solve a problem? It might be that your products are great but the advertising around them doesn’t tell people what they can do. It’s time to fix that issue and ensure you can let everyone know you’re the place to go if they need help with something.
Another way to do this is to write an informative blog or create videos that will explain why you’re the experts and what your products can do.
