How to give your business a competitive edge
Do you have an idea for a new business but wonder if there’s too much competition to succeed? The presence of other businesses in your niche doesn’t mean your business won’t make it. Having other people in your line of business shows that there is a market for your product or service.
One of the keys to business success is to offer products or services in a different way from those of your competitors. Give your customers some different and commendable. The under-listed are some of the steps you can take not only to find out the secrets that will give your business a competitive advantage.
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1: Explore Your Competitors’ Websites
Reviewing the websites of your business competitors is one of the key and important ways you can give your business a competitive edge. Make out time to visit their websites, on each website, try to find out:
- The products and or services that are featured on their landing page.
- Try also to find out other services or products your competitor offers that are not on display on the home page. It is possible that you offer something better and more valuable.
- Also, find try to find out how easy it is to move around their websites, and how easy it is to find products and services on the website. In other words, study their website structure.
- Try to evaluate their website speed, with this in mind, you can boost the speed of your own business website. Better speed and website structure will improve your website ranking. Your website ranks better than those of your competitors, visitors are more likely to visit your website and also patronize you.
- Also, study the search and filter capability of their website. This is if they sell products on their websites. Know how easy it is to filter product categories on their website.
- Try also to know their catchment area. Their area of coverage. This will give you a picture of the area left uncovered. Data Analysis.
- Know also the call to action on their pages. This includes their social media pages. A purposeful call to action can increase your business conversion.
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- Find out how they are contacted. Are there only a means of contact or a contact form? Or do they have also contact emails and probably phone numbers? Making it easier for people to reach will surely give your business the needed competitive edge. Give your website users contact options.
- Also, find out also how easy it is for users to find out the shipping rate of your competitor. That is if they sell a physical product and also offer to ship.
- Know also their refund policy if any. How easy it is to find their refund policy. Know that the simpler, your refund policy, the better.
- Check also if their checkout looks professional or amateurish. Does their checkout require a customer to create a customer account? This is a barrier that makes some customers abandon their carts.
- Also, find out the total time it takes to complete a transaction on their website.
- Try to know also if their website is mobile-friendly, the speed with which it loads on mobile devices, etc.
- Importantly also, know their payment options. Ensure you deploy the most trusted payment solution to your website.
Make notes on each site. You’ll get enough data with which you can analyze the areas they are weak and how you can offer a better experience. If you do not have time to do all of this yourself, please feel free to contact our web developer or call 08022066974 for competitive website analysis.
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2: Study Your Competitors’ Emails Marketing Strategy
Another very important finding you can make is to find out if your competitor deploys email marketing. Also, you should know how their email marketing works; when are they having sales, what are they promoting, and how do they promote it? You also need to find out if their emails display properly or if they have coding issues that frustrate customers. Try also to know the email service provider they engaged and the package if possible.
Sign up for your competitors’ email so you can study them and get most of the answers yourself. You can also engage the services of a paid email tracking service like SendView or Email Insights to analyze the emails for you.
3: Follow Your Competitors on Social Media
Another great way to give your business a competitive edge is through what we call Social Listening. This is done by keeping tabs on your competitors and your industry on social media. You need to know what your competitors are promoting, the response rate they receive from their followers, and the nature of their conversations with their followers. You can do this yourself or engage the service of a social media tool like Hootsuite to follow and analyze competing companies and brands as well as conversations.
Social Listening, besides keeping you up-to-date on the happenings in your niche, can assist you in knowing the areas where your competitor are weak so that you can outperform them a competitor. For instance, it will help you know their response rate, and what their customers and clients are complaining about. The gathering also these data can help shape how you will run your business’s social media accounts in order to keep pace with trends in your niche.
4: Research your Competition’s Reviews
Fetching the products and/or services reviews of your competitors can give you a glimpse of what they are doing well and also the things their customers are dissatisfied with and the things they would like to see from your kind of business. You can do this yourself just like other tasks we pointed out here or contact us to handle the analysis for you.
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5: Carry out a thorough SEO Analysis
Doing a complete competitive SEO analysis can help you find ways to make your business website outrank those of your competitors in search engine results. This goes beyond studying your competition’s websites to include
- Ranking, researching, and comparing keywords.
- Identifying keywords that your competition doesn’t focus on but customers search for.
- Adding the most relevant keywords to your web pages.
- Developing content that includes answers to the questions customers ask in their searches and keywords.
- Optimizing your website’s pages and posts for SEO
SEO analytics requires commitment and tools like Google Analytics to see results.
Give Your New Business a Competitive Edge
Monitoring your business competitors takes time, especially when you’re just starting your business and you’re learning how to effectively use monitoring and analytics tools.
The effort you put into analyzing your competitors can pay off by showing you the areas your competitors are weak and where customers aren’t getting their needs met. This is especially so if you can complete the research and analysis before building your own website. When you know what’s missing from customers in your line of business, you’ll know how you can meet their needs, earn their loyalty, and grow your business.
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