If you run a successful business, you’ll always have other businesses competing with you. While at times you might feel intimidated or inferior due to how big of a brand they are, take some time out to check out their website. What is appealing about your competitors’ products? Is there anything that you believe could be improved? Are they doing anything that you aren’t doing?
Even if you can’t answer every single question, the third one is easy: yes, they are doing things that you should be, too. If you do everything correctly, you will be ahead of your competition; however, the competition might be doing things that give them an advantage, and you don’t want that. Regardless, you need to act like they are ahead of you at all times. This helps motivate you to perform your very best. If you don’t run every aspect of your business in the proper fashion, prepare for customers to overlook what you have to offer. You want to be at the forefront of their minds at all times.
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They look at the Data
Do your competitors analyze the traffic coming through their web site and social media pages? We don’t just mean they reply to comments either. Your competitors are sitting down and looking at the data of the amount of time people spend on their site, the demographics of their audience, the pages that users spend the most time on, the videos that received the highest engagement, which days and times are their highest site session percentages, their return on investment, which ads were most successful, and so much more. Data analytics can transform the way your business operates, and it is the main reason your competitors are successful. They know what content to make and who to target based on looking at their numbers.
Invest in Yourself
If you overlook this step, consider your business a failure. Advertising is the only way to truly let people know what your company is all about. Invest in yourself if you want people to invest in you.
The point is to gain the biggest audience possible to gain exposure for your products. By investing money in ads, you just might even take away your competitor’s customers in the process. People respond to good advertising campaigns, and if someone is doing something better than someone else, odds are they want to be a part of it. This includes switching brands.
Television, radio, and billboards were the only ways to successfully advertise in the past. Things have, of course, changed. Today, social media is arguably better than any of the aforementioned. For a small investment, you have the opportunity to reach a wider and more diverse audience since almost everyone on earth has access to a smartphone or the Internet. Consumers like to see that businesses are active, and by advertising constantly, they won’t be able to miss you.
Get Yourself Ranked Higher on Google
A website is one of the most important components of running a business. When you have a good, attractive website, people take notice. What’s more important than simply being nice to look at is the behind the scenes information that takes place: SEO. Search Engine Optimization is the process of increasing the quality and quantity of website traffic by increasing the visibility of a website or a web page to users of a web search engine such as Google. Anything that goes on a website improves the overall SEO, meaning it makes it easier to find yours.
Always assume your competitors’ SEO is better than yours. Though you likely can’t monitor their rankings, you can monitor your own with helpful tools. Some of these include Google Analytics, SEO Profiler, and many others. Determine which one works best for the way you do business and implement it into your SEO tactics. Ways to improve your SEO is to always update written content and add more weekly, and better yet, daily. This allows the search engines to recognize that you have an active site, therefore they will push it organically for you. This helps more people find you.
Brainstorm as a Team
Face it: your business is nothing without your team. The people who work for you were hired for a reason, and if you refuse their input, it won’t be a smooth ride. This means that you should want to hear more from them, and make them a part of as many business decisions that you can. Have daily, weekly, and monthly staff meetings with your employees. Ask for their opinions on things and what they think needs to be changed.
Your competitors recognize the value of their teams. Be like your competitors and work with them instead of having them work for you. In addition to more ideas, you will start to see the morale in your office grow tenfold, making it a happier place to be for you and everyone involved.
Professional Quality Videos
Today’s world is instantaneous. We demand things right when we want them, and if we don’t get them, we get upset. Patience is no longer a virtue, and the attention span of the average person shows it. Since the year 2000, the average person’s attention span has fallen from 12 seconds to eight seconds–that’s a considerable drop. What does this mean for your business?
Since we can’t seem to pay attention to something for more than eight seconds, create something that will catch it guaranteed. Professional quality videos will do just that. A video gives them the opportunity to watch what you have to say instead of reading it off–something they’ll lose interest in quickly. Hire a professional to help you make unique, interesting videos. Trust us; your successful competitors are doing it, too.
This is another opportunity for you to create and operate a successful YouTube channel. YouTube is the second most popular search engine behind Google, and it has 1.5 billion users overall. In one day, 1.3 million of them use the platform. Those numbers are hard to ignore. When you make yourself available on YouTube, you gain access to a much larger audience.
On top of this, YouTube is an excellent tool to use to advertise. Businesses of all sizes take advantage of the platform to advertise using professionally shot videos. After all, shouldn’t high-quality videos be a part of a high-quality website?
Email Marketing
Email marketing gives businesses the opportunity to communicate regularly with their audience, as well as offer them special deals, offers, and promotions. This triggers customers to visit the site and make use of any of their deals, thus causing them to spend money and time on your website.
In addition to this, you can collect data and information on your audience’s behavior based on what they do with the emails. This helps you run new, specialized and personalized campaigns–something that customers like to see.
Email marketing is the highly effective digital marketing strategy of sending emails to prospects and customers. You can run paid campaigns, send and receive information about networking events, and so much more. It also gives you the chance to reach a large audience, as well as pinpoint what information your customers find the most useful. You can learn a lot from email marketing and use it to improve your current standings.
Analytics: Know Your Numbers
The most successful businesses are analyzing results and creating content and campaigns according to their findings. You want to produce items and services that you know your audience wants to see more of, and this is an easy way to determine what those things are. Analyze the numbers from clicks, performances, etc., and apply that to everything you do. This can include general costs, employee performances, posts, and email preferences, web rankings, engagement with topics, and general growth matrix.
These are just a few ways to beat your competitors, but make sure you assess every aspect of your business. If the point is to be number one, then follow these steps and more. Consider making the changes necessary in order to achieve the success you’ve always wanted, and make your mark in the business world.
