Your business’s competitive advantage is whatever your business is doing right and earns you customers over your competition.
Your competitive advantage should be front and center in your marketing; but what do you do if you don’t know what your business’s advantage is?
We’re going to outline exactly how to find your business’s competitive advantage and offer our best tips on how to market it!
Quick breakdown...
- Have conversations with your current customers
- Pay attention to reviews
- Study how your direct competitors market and do business
- Implement tests into your marketing
Let’s dive in.
1. Have Conversations with Your Current Customers
Even if your business doesn’t have a brick-and-morter store, you can still survey your current customer base!
A few ways to gather feedback from your customers are:
- Surveys distributed on receipts or via email that offer a raffle entry or discount if completed
- Social media questions and polls
- Discounts for posting a review
- Asking customers directly, face-to-face
These conversations are vital so that there's no question as to exactly why people choose your business. You may think you understand what draws people back to your business, but taking the time to ask and listen may uncover some things you hadn’t thought about!
Here are a few ways to ask for feedback through whatever channel you choose:
What is your favorite product or service of ours and why?
What made you choose our business today?
What could we do better?
Have you had good experiences with our customer service team?
Are you consistently satisfied with what we offer?
Offering a variety of specific and general questions can give you a good understanding of where you stand with your current customer base. Once you have that information, keep it handy for when you’re looking to make changes or improvements!
Check out this episode of our podcast, Marketing Revelations, to learn more about how to leverage your current client base!
2. Pay Attention to Reviews
If your business asks for reviews regularly, that’s great! Reviews not only help inform potential customers in their buying decisions, but they can also inform business owners and managers of their strengths and weaknesses.
When you’re looking through reviews, pay attention to any patterns or trends that pop up. Look for similar words, product or service mentions, customer service rep names, pricing shout outs, marketing praise, response time and more. Nothing is out of play when trying to discover what really sets your business apart!
3. Study How Your Direct Competitors Market and Do Business
If you’re not following your competitors on social, subscribed to their emails and periodically testing their products and services, you need to be.
You can learn a lot about how you stack up by simply taking time to study them!
When learning your business’s competitive advantage, instead of studying competitors to learn what you can do better, first, just focus on where your business is different and if that difference is an asset.
Once you clearly see where your business differs, you can determine how to strengthen the positive differences and shore up any weak areas.
Listen to this episode of Marketing Revelations to learn more about the importance of knowing your business's competitive advantage!
4. Implement Testing into Your Marketing
After you’ve gathered data, it’s time to amplify your competitive advantage in your marketing. Run a few tests specifically advertising your advantage and see what business that brings in!
Keep in mind, it may take a few iterations to get the branding and narrative right. If the first test campaign doesn't go as expected, don't give up! Brainstorm how your team can pivot and we're sure that, overtime, marketing your advantage will help your business thrive.
Final thoughts…
Your business’s competitive advantage is a marketing superpower and it deserves the time it takes to nail down and get right. Once you have your advantage, we’re certain your business will flourish!
RevLocal specializes in creating personalized digital marketing strategies for small businesses and multi-location brands. To learn more about our services, check out our What We Do page or contact us!