5 Ways for Your SMB to Stay Ahead
Today may even be the most difficult time to be a business owner, at least as far as competition goes. When you start researching your own niche online, you will find an enormous number of similar businesses that offer virtually the same services or sell the same products. This is why it is more difficult than ever to stand out from that crowd and attract customers that are going to be yours and yours only. However, there is always a way to stand out from the crowd and we’re here to help out with some tips.
Be customer oriented
Everyone says that the customer comes first, but not businesses live by this code. Your business is probably not the richest of them all, so your “thing” cannot be money, but charm. Your company can be the one with the most charming, friendliest customer support and customer policy. Always be available for help. Have calm and pleasant people work in customer support, send follow-up emails after each purchase and so on. Offer any kind of help before and after a purchase and try to always be available. A kind word can go a long way. Once those users get attracted to your business, they will never want to leave, so this guarantees each purchase from a distinct user will turn into a conversion and these are the numbers you want to boost. In the end, it is the loyal customers that count, they are the ones that impact the steady income of your business, not those one hit wonders.
Be innovative
We know that each business and most people will tell you how they love continuous learning and how they want to keep up with trends. However, most people are not exactly committed to this, they merely consider this something they should say in their job interview. This is where you come in. Your business should be the one that is never afraid of the unknown. Whenever there is something new on the market, be the first to try it out and utilize it in your day-to-day practice. Of course, this is a bit risky as you never know how these new practices may turn up. On the other hand, if it works, there is a lot to gain. For instance, your customers will respect you more for being fearless and innovative and they will surely spread the word. So, go ahead and feel empowered to do new things. If it happens that a new trend becomes regular practice, you will already be ahead as one the pioneers in the area.
Use proper visuals
The quality of images on websites and social media often gets overlooked. Not only that this is wrong, but it can cause you to lose regular customers and put away potential ones, as well. In this day and age, people no longer have the time to read through boring texts. Instead, everyone prefers visual representations. When offering visuals, one needs to be mindful of the image quality. Moreover, going one step further and using 3D rendering is even better. This will provide supreme quality of your product images and will instantly place you much higher on the chain of SMBs in the same domain. Everyone loves a realistic image of what they would like to buy and 3D rendered images will provide them exactly that. This step will ensure that anyone that visits your social network profile or website stays there and buys something. It is a detail that cannot go unnoticed so it has a guaranteed high success rate.
Delegate
This section is for all those entrepreneurs that do all the assignments themselves. While we do understand the need to have everything under control, you should be aware that such behavior is not sustainable. Of course, in the beginning when your startup consists of only a few people, it is clear that you would all have a bunch of duties and tasks. However, as your company grows, you get the “luxury” of being able to delegate. Unfortunately, people fail to realize this is not luxury, but a must. A jack of all trades is a master of none, they say. Even if you are good at a certain set of tasks, you will eventually start failing since your energy levels will become extremely low. This is a classical consequence of burnout. You cannot let this happen as your role as an entrepreneur is quite important and you should save your energy to be able to do what is actually your job. Everything else should be assigned to some other people.
Use dynamical marketing
In order to shake things up, you should combine several marketing strategies and change them every once in a while. This is an extremely unpopular move for most businesses as everyone is afraid of losing the success rate they already have and they like to stick to their comfort zone and the strategies that have worked so far. However, you should be bold and different and change the strategy from time to time. There are no guarantees that they work. What is more, it is statistically improbable that they will all work. However, they will serve as a great research experiment. Keep thorough documentation of what each strategy proved to be like and you will know what to fix in your next change iteration. This method is unpopular as it doesn’t yield results instantly, however, even if it takes time, the results are extremely valuable and worth the initial sacrifice.
All in all, a general advice on how to stay ahead in a highly competitive business domain would be to use your opponents’ weaknesses to your advantage. Anything important representatives of your business domain lack, should be something that you can offer. This will definitely be a good way for your business to get in the focus of customers. More importantly, once they realize that you are all about actions and not just words, they will definitely come here to stay.
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Author Byline: Liam Collins is a tech pundit and Web enthusiast working at TuiSpace.com. He spends most of his time reading and writing about the current affairs in the world of information technology. When he isn’t working, he likes going for long bike rides and walks in nature.
With a solid foundation in technology, backed by a BIT degree, Lucas Noah has carved a niche for himself in the world of content creation and digital storytelling. Currently lending his expertise to Creative Outrank LLC and Oceana Express LLC, Lucas has become a... Read more