How to Set Your Business Apart from Your Competitors
YOUR BUSINESS should have something unique about it that sets it apart from the competition.
If your business appears to be just like every other business in your industry, then there will be very little reason for customers to choose you as opposed to one of your many competitors.
When competing businesses have no distinguishing benefits to set them apart, when they all offer basically the same products or services, the same customer service, etc. then customers will tend to compare those businesses based on price alone–lowest price wins.
Here are some of the ways you can set yourself apart:
1. Focus on a Particular Niche.
Perhaps you are a photographer that specializes in food product pictures, or corporate photographs for annual reports.
If you are a fitness instructor, you could focus on helping keep business employees fit, or you could be the personal fitness instructor that focuses on high level business executives.
2. Become the Low-Price, or the High-Price Leader
Design your business to provide good products for an extremely economical price. Your company would be committed to providing excellent savings for your customers.
Or you could take the opposite route and become the high-price provider. Obviously you would have to target a completely different market segment than the low-price leader.
3. Offer Excellent Customer Service
Set your company apart by providing exceptional customer service. Make your customers say, ‘Wow!’ whenever they do business with you. This is one of the best ways to set your business apart from the rest.
4. Offer a Unique Advantage
If you are a dog groomer, perhaps your unique advantage is that you will come to your customers’ homes and groom their pets there.
If possible, a lawn care service could offer a special treatment to keep their customers’ lawns greener longer. If that service is unique to their company, they have set themselves apart from their competitors.
5. Offer an Incredible Guarantee
We once helped a travel company that specialised in motor coach vacation tours for senior travellers, rise head and shoulders above their competitors by offering a 100% money-back guarantee on any aspect of their trip that wasn’t delivered as promised.
Their sales immediately experienced a 20% increase, and very, very few people ever asked for a refund. We knew that would be the case, since this business owner always provided top-notch services and always delivered everything she promised.
Her associates and competitors thought she had lost her mind by offering such a powerful guarantee. They mistakenly believed that her customers would take advantage of her– but that is rarely the case.
The vast majority of customers are good, honest people who just want to know that they are going to get what they paid for. So make it clear that you will stand behind your promises. Guarantee them.
A great example (he said modestly!) is our own More Customers Group guarantee. We’re possibly the only web site developers in South-East Queensland and Northern NSW that offer a 100% money-back guarantee for web development services.
If you want to talk over these Get More Customers options, or the others I have up my sleeve, give me a call 0414 955 743 – advice is totally free of charge.
Cheers,
John