We are living in the era of consumption, and therefore more and more new products and businesses are emerging every day; the buyer is becoming ever more sophisticated and picky. Due to the constant search for new options and extremely high competition in the market, the loyalty of users to a certain brand is constantly decreasing. The statistics claim that 58% of customers are not brand loyal. How do you make a user notice your product, bring him/her satisfaction, and come back to you next time?
Here are the top 10 tips on how to help your business stand out.
1. Do the research!
First of all, if you own a business, you should be aware of your products’ relevancy. That’s why you must regularly review and analyze tons of information. Research your industry, your successful competitors and make some summary on their competitive advantages. Try to walk a mile in the user’s shoes and analyze what can possibly make your rivals more relevant and desired for visitors.
Evaluate competitors’ services or products and compare them to yours, ideally by trying them out by yourself. What features are good and what issues need improvement? How is the service quality? Why would customers choose this product?
Conducting analysis will help you get the idea of how you can adjust your strategy to confront their pros and benefit from their weak points. Certainly, competition with other companies always fires you up and can be indicated as a litmus test for the common relevancy of your business. Understanding and weaponizing holes in competitors’ business strategies is an excellent model for setting your brand apart.
2. Don’t keep up with the Joneses
Although gaining an understanding of your competitors’ actions is vitally important, completely copying their marketing strategy can have a terrible influence on your business. You may find some sort of inspiration or ideas from your competitors, gain something useful for yourself, but completely mimicking their efforts may be destructive for your reputation and authenticity. Moreover, there’s no guarantee that those tactics were successful in your rivals or will bring success to you.
You should drop the fear factor and stop fussing about what your competitors are up to and pour all your enthusiasm into creating original and self-sufficient content with your signature on it ‘cause that’s what makes your business stand out. Be creative instead of imitating creativity!
3. Express yourself
The main key to make your brand stand out amongst monotonous and dull businesses is creating unique branding. Brainstorm your project and reinvent your strategy by implementing your values and worldview into your strategy. Authenticity always drags more attention than stereotyped patterns. Ability to differentiate your business and highlight your unique features is paramount for reaching your perfect customer. Consider rebranding to make your business remarkable. For example, Burberry was always associated with classic British style and considered to be a successful brand, but in 2017 the company noticed a huge gap in their sales. The real reason behind it was young people, who chose new and bright brands without even considering Burberry as an option. So, they’ve done an iconic rebranding, still maintaining authenticity and referring to the roots of the company, which led to the major increase of brand popularity amongst younger audiences.
4. Review your Web Design and UX
In fact, a user needs less than a second to judge your business, and the first impression is always essential. Your web page outlook is your calling card for visitors, that’s why you definitely have to pay attention to your web design. If your site looks ugly and outdated, users are more likely to flip out and choose your rival with a more aesthetically pleasing appearance. Learn more about the need for redesign in our article How long can your website stay relevant.
Imagine entering the website, eager to find the exact specific thing. How many minutes of your valuable time are you ready to spend on scrolling irrelevant pages, if it’s easier to switch to another site with plain navigation? Websites with terrible navigation may be misleading for users and have extremely high bounce rates. The UX quality of the webpage is considered to be one of the most important factors in the Google ranking system. It affects the efficiency of your SEO campaign, leads, and converting users into customers.
Providing an excellent user experience increases user trust and loyalty and makes it easier to convert users into dedicated customers.
5. Identify Customer Pain Points
A better understanding of your customer’s needs and pain points benefits your business at all stages. Also, you cannot objectively judge the pain points of users based on statistics, because customer’s pain points are highly subjective for every specific field.
There are two substantive sources of the information you need to reveal your customers’ pain points — your sales and customer support teams, and your customers themselves. You may also create a focus group of inexperienced users who can objectively assess the overall quality of your business and indicate your potential mistakes.
Try to abstract and look at the product through the user’s eyes to understand what may be missing in your product, site, or customer service.
6. Personalize Customer Service
The truth is, personalized customer service is one of the best ways to be remembered by the user. A superior level of customer service makes your business stand out from the crowd of indifferent competitors. When visitors feel valued and treated like royalty, they’ll keep coming back for more. Address your customers by name and in a friendly manner, humanize your contact by using small talk and implement loyalty programs. Don’t hesitate to pay some special attention to your loyal customers by treating them with gifts and discounts.
If you own an online or offline store, consider attaching small gifts to every order. If you own a cafe or restaurant, treat your customers with free candies or chewing gum. Those tiny gestures seem to be so irrelevant, but they can make somebody’s day and reinforce the generally positive impression of your business.
7. Be Creative!
Nowadays, the consumer has become more moody and fussy than ever before. Market competition is higher than ever, stakes are high, and reaching your desired audience becomes harder and harder. Moreover, consumers are extremely aware that they have options. We’re not in North Korea, right? That’s why you have to create something bright, brave, and outstanding! You’ve definitely had the situation when some catchy ad or jingle stuck in your mind and repeated over and over. For example, the Old Spice commercials have already become some kind of cultural phenomenon.
Represent your brand in the way nobody did before, live up to the hype, customers are craving new ideas!
8. Build your Social Presence
Social networks have become an integral part of our lives, without which no day goes by. As it turns out, users aged from 16 to 24 spend the most time on social media — approximately 3 hours per day. The amount of time that people spend on social media is rapidly increasing, and that’s why you should build your presence on social networks. Referring to statistics, customers spend from 20 to 40% more money on businesses that have interacted with them on social media. Activity on social media helps your business to stand out and to increase brand recognition by a constant presence in the user’s life.
Continuous generation of engaging content and warm-up of the audience helps to be heard and keep in touch with potential visitors. Pay special attention to creating video content, as it’s reportedly the most engaging type of content. Furthermore, people are more likely to share videos than any other type of post. Setting up your targeting, responding to comments and direct communication with the audience can bump up the quantity and quality of your followers.
9. Networking and Building Trust
Some business owners underestimate the efficiency of the grapevine. With the growing popularity of social media, opinion leaders (influencers) have become another kind of advertising platform through which the right target audience can best be reached Collaborating with influencers, celebrities or other brands can skyrocket your business in just a couple of hours. For example, a couple of weeks ago, Crocs sales increased by 4,900% after the publication of Nicki Minaj’s photo in pink crocs. The hype was so huge that users eventually crashed the Crocs site!
Many brand owners claim that influencer marketing has now become imperative for a successful campaign, and we’re not talking about standard Facebook and Instagram only. Pay attention to the newbies like TikTok and Clubhouse, and jump on the bandwagon until the competition gets too big.
10. Pay attention to SEO
Last but not the least, keep one eye on your meta descriptions and keywords. Distinctive and meaningful meta descriptions are one of the possible ways to make your business stand out. Moreover, this way you’re not gonna misguide users and attract only relevant audiences, which can also be helpful for decreasing your page’s bounce rate.
All in all, there are far more ways to make your business stand out. Making your business memorable and unique may be complex, yet possible. Look at the world through fresh eyes and try to objectively estimate your business pros and cons, try out something new, and reinvent your marketing strategy. You can always steal the show with your creativity!
