You know the harsh truth? No idea totally belongs to one person. It is the hard reality we all have to live with. It is called competition.
Competition is good for customers. It challenges the businesses to put up their best for the customers. Fortunately for you, you can always stand out from the crowd if you feel like you are in a market that is very crowded. A good example of how you can stand out is Google.
If you are looking for some inspiration, just go and take a look at the story of how the almighty Google started. The founders, Larry and Sergey aren’t the first people that invented the search engine. But what happened? They were able to make their product stand out and dominated the market, generating billions of dollars in profit.
Instead of complaining about competition, start brainstorming how you can make your brand stand out. It is not easy. However, it is doable. In this article, you will learn of some tested approaches you can try to make your brand stand out in a crowded market.
Top 5 Ways to Make Your Brand Stand Out In a Crowded Market:
Focus on Building Relationship With Customers
If you want to make money, sell a product; if you want to sell forever, build relationships. Your focus as a brand should be to build relationships with your customers. The great thing about building relationships is that it will enable you to understand what your customers want and serve them better.
But it does not end there; when you have a relationship with your customers, not only will they buy from you but they will keep on coming back for more. You need to focus on building relationships to make them loyal. The fact is that 3 loyal customers are better than 6 non-loyal customers.
When you have converted your customers into loyal customers, not only will they keep on coming back for more, they will constantly refer their family and friends to your business.
You can build relationships with your customers by:
- Communicating early and regularly
- Rewarding your customers
- Asking for feedback
- Always being honest with them.
Reward Your Customers
It is in the nature of human to value appreciation. Don’t miss an opportunity to reward your loyal customers. It shows them that you value their patronage.
You can reward your customers by offering them a discount or another product for free. A customer that gets a reward from you after doing business with you is more likely to come back. Come to think of it, if a customer order for a product worth $50 and you offer him $5 discount the next time he orders from you, the customer is more likely to come back for more.
Embrace Personalization
Personalization is the new thing in the marketing. In fact, it is the future of marketing. According to the CEO of RichRelevance, David Selinger, “personalization will be a critical factor that will differentiate e-commerce going forward”.
Personalization makes the customer feel special as you are directly attending to his needs. For instance, Canada’s Holt Renfrew, offer free personal shopping assistant when you visit their e-commerce shop. Another website, Shoemint, ask you to take a survey so they can find a shoe that will match your needs. The truth is that personalization is the future of marketing.
If you want your brand to stand out, find that extra thing that will make your customer feel special and he will always come back for more.
Have a Unique Design
A great way to stand out is to have an easily identifiable unique design across all portals. Whether it is your website, social media, email marketing, or video channel, you need to have a design that makes you stand out from others. When a visitor arrives on your blog or social media account, he needs to know it is you without guessing.
Don’t settle for the same design everyone is using. You can put in more effort and offer something different. Change your packaging to reflect quality. The truth is that you need a way to make your brand stick to your customers’ brain. If you offer a design that is different from the norm, your customers will always remember you for that.
Overall, you need to be consistent with your brand message, branding, and belief. Constantly changing these will make you appear inconsistent with the customers and you will lose them.
Capitalize On Your Strengths
What is working for you? Once you’ve discovered what is working for, you need to build on it. As far as it is important to always experiment new ways of doing things, don’t completely abandon your working formula. Doing so can hurt your business.
Doing more of what you are already good at can be what will make you stand out from the crowd. Do you know why? Because no one can play “you” better than “you”. You are the best version of yourself. Instead of abandoning your strengths in the search for new ones, try and scale it up. Don’t pay so much attention to the metrics everyone is using. If you found something that works for you, build on it. However, don’t forget to stay up on trends.
Bottom Line
It takes more than building a website and having a logo to stand out from the crowd. If you want to stand out, you must be willing to go to lengths other businesses aren’t willing to go. You must learn to serve your customer the way other businesses aren’t doing. It takes effort, patience, constant brainstorming of ideas and time to make your business stand out. Don’t lose hope; continue putting in an effort and one day, it will pay off.
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