Beat Your Competition with these 11 Simple Business Tips
There is no escaping the brutality of business!
Another business or other businesses will inevitably lose market share for every success you experience.
The following tips will give you a competitive edge over your rivals and protect you from new competitors.
- Leads are more significant than sales
Increasing revenue and business growth are both critical to us. Building a loyal audience of avid fans is the most sustainable way to achieve this.
Optimal website forms, intelligent follow-up emails, and content marketing contribute to business success. The goal of giving away free value is to build trust before asking someone for their hard-earned money.
Do you not know how to create optimized lead generation pages for your website? Leadpages is a trusted tool that will help you get the job done.
- Solve problems, not sell products.
People do not search for your brand, whether you like it or not. The only thing they are looking for is a solution or a product (unless you are running Supreme or Nike).
Your product’s benefits should not be listed in detail. Instead, focus on solutions. To help the customer achieve their goals, you should explain your product in simple, straightforward terms.
Create a profile of your target customer by conducting some market research. Do you offer a product or service that solves other people’s problems or makes their lives more efficient and enjoyable?
- Your pricing should be optimized.
A price drop, for example, does not necessarily lead to higher sales (even if it squeezes margins). Assume you are positioning your brand as a premium one. Cutting prices, in this case, may even hurt your brand since you are not necessarily trying to sell value to your customers.
Consider this case study from Robert Cialdini’s seminal book ‘Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion: a jeweller sold out of turquoise jewellery after accidentally doubling, instead of halving, the price. The inflated price tag lent the product an unwarranted cachet!
The price of a premium brand can be optimized without lowering it. Consider offering the quality-conscious customer an ‘exclusive’ benefit that your competitors do not or cannot offer.
However, slashing prices does not mean a loss if you are in a value-driven market. Low prices can help you quickly acquire new customers who may purchase other items in your shop and then return them.
Context also plays a significant role in pricing. For example, putting a $10,000 car next to a $100,000 car might be the best way to sell it. Any price point decision should be made strategically.
- Make sure your employees are friendly to customers
The importance of this cannot be overstated! A sales assistant’s personality affects whether someone buys a product consciously or unconsciously.
Employees’ personalities are irrelevant to price or whether your product can meet their needs. More sales will always be attracted by friendly customer service staff.
It is imperative to hire outgoing, friendly, and cheerful individuals. Ensure they learn to be consistently friendly and ensure customers feel important throughout their training.
- Longer opening hours
Why not close up an hour later if your store gets a rush of customers as closing time approaches?
Get creative with rosters to resolve this issue, even if it causes dissatisfaction among staff. Determine your busiest periods and staff by monitoring customer footfall throughout the day and week.
Extended opening hours can also lead to higher costs and more extensive working hours, which can be offset by reducing headcount during quieter periods.
There is no downside to this!
- Make it easy for customers to find your phone number
Customers will always prefer phone calls over emails and Facebook, regardless of the age of the internet. However, many online businesses with thin margins opt out of operating phone lines entirely. Your brand should offer voice-to-voice communication to customers.
Consider directing customers to standardized, pre-existing responses on your website (i.e., FAQs) to minimize the time and costs spent responding to queries.
You do not need to make them click more than once to find your phone number if their query is not listed in the drop-down menu of FAQs.
Especially if you are a retail business, put it front and centre on your website.
Real-time communication can be provided with a ‘live chat’ bot at a low price.
- hesitate to give something for nothing
You can give your satisfied customers a voucher for your products and services as a thank you for their purchase. In addition to what they already love about you, they will love you even more if you do this for them.
You can benefit from it in the following ways:
- This ensures that they will return to your store in the future. There is no such thing as wasting freebies!
- You may also sell other items when they come back to redeem their vouchers. You might be able to strategically coordinate the freebie with a special sale if your company operates online.
What is more? If you have received a voucher or freebie, chances are you will not keep quiet about it. On social media, there has been some positive buzz about this.
- Give back to your community by supporting it
There is no question that local businesses have a much more significant influence on their local communities than any global chain can.
In addition to sponsoring a kid’s sports team, retailers, hair salons, or gardening companies can offer deep discounts to OAPs.
To ensure that your community support is authentic, ensure it aligns with your brand offering and business journey.
- Make innovative use of social media.
Building relationships with your customers on social media is one of the most effective ways to build a solid business! Do not forget what ‘social’ means! Twitter does not work for soulless corporate chatter.
Give it some personality if you write updates or posts about your brand. Of course, this comes with risks. The benefits, however, can be tremendous if you get it right.
Consider your brand’s tone of voice when crafting your content. Provide information, assistance, entertainment, or amusement.
Do not patronize, especially given the dire PR consequences.
- Niche ownership
Mastering one discipline is sometimes better than being a jack of all trades. The benefit of multiple revenue streams is that they spread your risk: if one fails, others can fill in.
While ‘specialists’ are likely to offer higher quality services and products than generalists, consumers tend to associate them with higher prices. The specialist usually devotes all his or her resources to perfecting one product or service.
What is your area of specialization? It should be something you excel at. Own it, whatever you do.
- Embrace humility
There is no such thing as too much satisfaction in the business. There is always room for improvement – and you must keep improving!
It is okay to feel smug once in a while. Do not miss out on the joy of a successful product launch or the joy of positive feedback from customers. Nevertheless, you do not have to keep repeating it to your customers!
Countless hitherto successful brands have failed because of complacency, a common element. It is often the case that innovative, nimble, and inventive start-ups do better than prominent market leaders who have gotten lazy and slack off.
Your disruptive business model may work today, but it could fall flat tomorrow.
To improve continuously, keep a humble attitude and strive to improve continuously. Books and seminars can inspire entrepreneurs. Usurpation occurs when you believe your mission is complete.
Wrapping up
Business improvement is not complicated, and there are many ways to do it!
Please take advantage of the business tips above or incorporate them into your current strategy.