As the world continues to experience an extraordinary worldwide health crisis, businesses in almost every sector have come to a near halt. Consumer behavior is dramatically changing, and competing companies are forced to innovate their business strategies or risk being left behind. Research shows that 55% of Canadian business leaders are concerned about the business environment’s competitiveness. Beating your competition for more market share is more challenging than ever. So, how do you outsmart your competition in such challenging times? These tips should help you emerge ahead of your competitors for improved sales and profitability.
Know Your Competition
To outsmart your competitors, you need to know them very well indeed. The best way to do this is to analyse the marketplace. Take a hard look at your competitors to see what they do, their marketing strategies, and their operating approaches in the market. While you may have your plans and tactics, your competition’s good awareness will offer better insight into addressing your shared customers’ needs better than they do. This way, you can learn from some of their strategies, explore the loopholes, and learn how to be strong in areas where they are weak.
Prepare Your Competitive Analysis
With good knowledge about your rivals, you can begin to prepare your competitive market briefs. This analysis will help you recognize your most significant competitor and assess their situations based on several factors. The competitive analysis will help you with your marketing and strategic management by determining all existing and potential competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. This means one thing; you can create a robust business plan by identifying threats and opportunities in the marketplace to improve your sales, products, and other promotional strategies.
Enhance Your Brand Image Above Your Competition
Communication is vital to building customer loyalty, and nothing speaks more than your brand image. Your business branding and communication are two peas in a pod. A good business brand will help you connect with customers on an emotional level. Buying is an emotional experience; therefore, your business can appeal to your customers’ emotions with a good business brand. Several research papers have proven that people are more open to doing business with familiar brands. An effective business brand will improve your business value, generate sales referrals, and set you apart from any existing competition.
Define And Interact With Your Target Audience
Interestingly, studies have shown that 80% of businesses don’t have enough information about their customers. If this is the case with your business, creating an effective brand would be next to impossible. Even though you may have a good understanding of your customers’ spending patterns, you can use a lot more information to perfect your promotional plans. The data you need to build a stable relationship with your customers is often overlooked, although it is right in front of you. You can use many online tools to have a good insight into your customer’s activities, timing of buying, and related searches. These analytical tools are crucial to triggering your customers into more significant purchases.
Target New Markets Beyond Your Competition
Setting targets with new markets is an important lesson you can learn in the business world. When a particular industry is booming, it is just a matter of time before the sector is flooded with several other businesses offering the same or similar service. Your ability to expand to new markets will set you apart from your competition as new markets can offer faster and significant growth. However, be sure your business is ready enough to expand before taking this step. For example, you can test your success in your new market through surveys and other forms of marketing research strategies. This way, you’ll have a better understanding before going all-in with your resources.
Go Digital
In Canada, there are about 25 million internet users that prefer to purchase items from ecommerce businesses. This figure is expected to rise to 30 million by 2024. E-commerce retail revenue in 2019 was approximately 1.85 billion dollars, but the current pandemic means this figure will increase significantly as more people are making their buys online. The current digital revolution has contributed to most businesses taking their transactions online, especially on social media, which has an average of 2 million users each day. There is no better moment to optimize your online presence than now. You should consider a boutique SEO agency to enhance your digital presence to generate leads, create brand awareness, and drive your online conversions.
Solve Real Problems
The fastest way to grow your business and outsmart your competition is to solve real customer problems. When you are studying your competitors or making your market analysis, you will likely settle for what your competitors think is the problem instead of the actual problem. This leads to many businesses following the same thread and leaving behind several untapped opportunities waiting to be discovered. Create a plan to help you identify the real problems your customers expect your business to solve and develop practical solutions. Give your customers exactly what they want, and they’ll keep coming back for more. Addressing real customer concerns will differentiate you from your competitors, and that is what you need in your arsenal.
Customer Feedback Is Priceless
Nobody tells how your business can do better than your customers. This is the one mistake most business owners commit by not asking for customer feedback. Ask your customers what they think of your products and services, and you will be surprised at how many opportunities you are sitting on. Listening to customer feedback makes them feel important and a valuable part of your business. Find out what they want and how you can improve your business with them, and you will be glad you did. Feedback offers a medium to convince your customers to come back to do more business. Even poor feedback can help you sell a product, so don’t underestimate it.
Discover Partnership Opportunities
In the business world, collaborations are widespread. With the current global crisis, partnerships are more popular than ever. Many companies are reaching out to others with expectations of creating new markets. These collaborations will help the two parties by providing opportunities that were earlier unattainable. Partnerships permit entrepreneurs to come together with complementary skills, share costs, and risks. Although statistics have proven that 70% of business partnerships failed to yield the expected results, it remains a great way to steer ahead of competitions in the wake of the COVID-19 as many businesses are barely treading water.
Never Ignore Your Team
Behind every successful business, there is a team; your business can only be as good as your team. While you focus your efforts on beating the competition, it is essential to make your team happy. The only way to keep the team productive is to make them cheerful. This way, you can keep staff turnovers in check. While the trends can tell what your team needs, avoid focusing too much on that. Instead, listen to your team first. Business leaders often keep demanding trust, collaboration, amongst other things. But they somehow struggle to listen. They claim ownership of their business without a second thought of what the employees need. Want dedication from your team? Help them discover satisfaction in their work, and you will easily beat your competition.
In the continually evolving business climate, somebody must set the pace for innovation and advancement in business operations to do better than the competition. Why should you be a follower when you can decide the pace? The rival can be intimidating, but these tips should prepare you for the competition.