World of industries is messed up with massive amount of competition, which absolutely necessitates an entrepreneur to come up with different strategies to make his/her business great from competitors. Here are some simple but sharp weapons that a small business entrepreneur can use to overcome the sick of competition and to beat them out from the way.
Reach them before anyone else does
The first thing what any businessperson should do is to reach the customers before anyone else does and this the most effective plus most challenging part of the business. The best sources to find new customers are the local Magazines and Newspapers, which contains loads of Advertisements. Some magazines even do categorize their Advertisements and make it easy to identify the type of Advertisements. Therefore, one who sells facial cream would go to a niche magazine (that focuses on weddings or beauty tips) and identify those who are advertising about their beauty parlors or Spas and they can be turned into as B2B customers.
See your product as your customer
Assume that you are a customer who needs your product and then go to supermarkets or the possible places where you can access it. Then, you will find whether your product is available in different destinations, whether your dealers know well about your product and so on. This is the best way to increase the accessibility of your product.
Ask your customer
Study your customers’ minds whether they are happy with this product or not. However, some people tend not to respond honestly when doing some surveys or focus groups. Therefore, if possible, you pretend to be a customer who just needs an advice from another customer regarding the usability, quality, and the price of your product and speak to them very casually. This way you can get genuine opinions and most importantly..........
Just studying would cause no gain. Therefore, invest on improvements
Most people just do market research as a procedure and never implement new things and this is the point where they fail. So, implement whatever you were suggested by the customers.
Network Network and Network
This is the most important task. First, try to market your products within your own personal network such as friends, relatives, college mates and with your work-place buddies. They will give genuine opinions about the product and would also influence it with their own networks....so the network would start growing.
Build loyalty
Whenever a customer makes a purchase, get all possible information about themselves and database them. After one or two months, call them, ask how the product works, and most importantly, don’t forget to ask them whether they are interested in buying another. However, never try to make it as a request or even forcing and your voice should be very casual.
Bother much about ladies
You never know that lady customers can be turned into your best loyal customers if they are really satisfied with the product and their influence cycle is really vast. So, the maximum you get lady customers, the chances are high to get more loyal customers.
Guest posting blog or forum
This is ultimate point where you can give an option for your customers to post their views about your products and is one great way to promote online.
Never limit sales with local markets...try eBay
EBay is the greatest choice for small businesses. Just because the business is operated locally, it doesn’t mean that the sales should be limited locally. EBay can bring best bargaining for a product that sells on average.
Forget about high quality websites and merchant accounts
If you want to expand your business online, go for a free software such as wordpress to design your website and get the coding from cost effective payment processors such as Paypal or checkout.com, create a simple online store and promote it online.
Self promote with B2B articles
Write articles about your brand and publish them as B2B articles in the local magazines and newspapers.
Know your competitors
Study your competitors, their strengths, and weaknesses. The foremost thing that should be noticed is why competitors are successful and if not, why they are not.
Now take the weapon...your beating point
Be aware about their strengths and there is nothing to do with it. However, study their weaknesses and come up with a great point that beats their weakness. Let’s say your competitor is doing good but charges high price. Now you can make a strategy to charge the lowest price and to make profits by increasing the quantity of purchasing.
Unique value proposition
Coming up with a strategy that beats competitors’ weaknesses would only help in achieving success. To long last in the business, you would need a killing idea that no one has done before, it may be something like the first to introduce in the market.
Take the green concept
Try to fund small amounts to CSR and promote your CSR activities in a cost effective way such as writing articles about your campaigns in free blogs or publish event photos in you Face-book fan page. These two ways can be considered to be the most efficient plus cost effective mean of promoting the concept of Green.The least advice is Never try to imitate big players in the industry. Big players are big players, so you really don't have the ability to bet with them. Just stand where you are, know competitors in your capacity, come up with your own killing idea and keep your customers always delighted.
Your genuine views are appreciated in this blog. You can comment on this post or send personal suggestions to nichecrunch@hotmail.com.
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6 comments:
Interesting. Beating competition is the hardest thing nowadays. Do u really think that you can beat all ur competitors and stand alone in this crowed competitive industries? I think no. So u have copy them (i mean not exactly) in way creatively imitating all competitors. then only u can go for a survival.
Mr.Romesh, wht u r telling is absolutely dump. u first have to know what the basic logic behind succeeding in a business is. It is differentiation and u need to differentiate ur product from others. U r the people who destroy the soul of novelty and novel ideas. u always copy others and pretend to show that u r the people who came up with those ideas. U simply don't know how to stand in ur own foots. don't depend on others, come up with ur own strategies and ur own ideas. then u will get success. please forget abt creative imitation since imitation means imitation and there is nothing creative.
So u think creating and introducing novel products is such an easy business that anyone can do. u first have to mind the followings.
1. The true or original novel products were only introduced to this world several years ago.
2. products that claim they are innovate do just pretend them to be so. in actual words, they creatively imitate some big concepts. take ceylinco on the spot here. they claimed they came up with a novel product in sri lanka. but is that true in real words? no. they imited some foreign players and customized it to sri lankan nature. thats it. so
i will tell u...don't try to be over smart. just be smart.ok?
You guys are creating a war using this blog. if you really want to succeed in your business, then
you must know where u stand
whr ur competitor stands
wht ur customers like with ur competitor and what not they like.
by analyzing it, u must decide ur own way of playing the game.
it depends on ur personality whether u want to be a creative imitator or totally innovator. however, u must know wht ur doing and creative enough to differentiate ur self from others.
hope u get the point and don't fight here for no reason. :):):)
I Love the hot war happening in this pop-up more than this blog.
Differentiation must be used in any business and it doesn't mean only to be used in a small business. Anyway differentiation is much preferred in a small business since most of the people would be doing same or similar things as you do.
differentiation is the point where any business will use to capture their place. Big investors can differentiate themselves with rich value additions, functionalities and etc.
But a small business doesn't have the capacity to do so. so. the differentiation here should be done in the way of approach, way of building relationship etc.
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