Every business owner wants to beat their competition. It’s part of what running a business is all about. However, you need to keep in mind that your competitors are doing the exact same thing. They want to steal your customers, just as much as you want to steal theirs. This guide will teach you five smart ways to beat the competition.
Solve customers’ pain points
The most important thing you can do to beat the competition is to solve your customers’ pain points. Pain points are the things that keep them up at night. They are the problems that they are actively looking for a solution for. If you can provide a solution, you can almost guarantee their loyalty. The key to solving pain points is truly understanding the customer. That involves talking to them as much as possible, doing in-depth customer research, and making the solution as thorough as possible.
Find a niche in the market
The best way to beat the competition is to provide something that they don’t. This is called finding a niche in the market. This is not to say that you have to be completely different to your competitors, just add a feature that their product or service doesn’t have. The more niche you can get, the easier it is to fend off the competition.
Set competitive pricing
Pricing is one of the hardest decisions you have to make as a business owner. It might seem like a good idea to undercut your competitors to draw their customers away from them. However, this can result in a pricing war, which will eat into everyone’s profits. Alternatively, you can set a premium price point to differentiate yourself as a more high-end option. The best approach is to set competitive pricing. You don’t have to undercut the competition, just make your prices similar and customers will consider your product.
Attract the best employees
One sure-fire way to beat the competition is to attract the best talent. If all of the best employees want to work for you, your competitors will be left with the second-tier talent. That means they won’t be able to compete in marketing, sales, or product development. The question is – how do you attract the best employees? The answer is pretty simple. Offer competitive salaries, provide excellent benefits, and create an awesome working culture. Factoring things like health insurance quotes into the cost of each employee will ensure that your company is desirable to work for.
Provide great customer service
Customer service is absolutely essential for beating your competition. If you can’t beat their prices and you can’t provide a better product, you need to beat them on customer service. This goes further than reactive customer service (when something goes wrong and you have to fix it). It involves proactive customer service as well.
That means checking up with orders, offering free advice, and making your customer service team available at all times. Great customer service can be an important point of differentiation for customers. They will gladly pick a brand they like over one they don’t.