In business, when you start looking around and doing your all-important research, you will soon find that you have competition everywhere. No matter what you do or how you do it, there will be another company that does a similar thing. It might be products, it could be services, it could be a combination of both, but the competition will certainly be there. Even if there doesn’t seem to be much competition right now, with dozens of new businesses starting up each week, it won’t be long before there is someone looking to compete with you.
Technology can help you stay ahead of your competition. When used in the right way, tech can boost your business and show your customers that you are the right company to use because you know what you’re doing, and you have their best interests at heart. What kind of tech are we talking about? Read on to find out more.
Social Media
When you think of social media you probably initially think of your friends and family, or memes to be shared and petitions to sign. However, you can also utilise social media successfully for your business; it can be the perfect way to showcase what you can do and what you have to offer to hundreds or even thousands (or more) of people. When you sign up for either:
- Tumblr
- A combination of the above
You can create posts that show exactly what your business is all about, and why people should buy from you.
Social media is also useful for keeping up with what the competition is doing. When you know how they are marketing and who they are marketing to, you can use this information to come up with your own marketing strategies and develop new ways to get in touch with potential customers. This is especially easy on Facebook, and you can see exactly who your competition is focusing on when it comes to marketing, and focus on the same people yourself, showing them different options.
Website
Simply using a social media account is not enough if you want to get ahead of the competition; it should be part of your marketing strategy, not your entire strategy itself. A website will also be required if you want to beat your competitors. A website promotes trust, showing that you intend to be a long-term business, investing in your products, your customers, and your future. It will also help you to develop your brand. This will help people choose you rather than someone else.
A website also allows you to sell even when you aren’t physically at your desk, or even awake. You can install an online store and make money 24 hours a day. Not only is this great for you, boosting your profits and, especially if your competition has no online store, making you seem the best and totally on top of all new technology., but it is convenient for your customers as well, meaning that they will enjoy buying from you more. You can even employ devices such as chatbots to ensure that your customer services are available (at least to some extent) all the time. All of this combined will prove that you are the best business to use.
Starting a website is not a difficult or expensive thing to do. The first step is to find out how to obtain a web host for your country. Once you have that in place, you can then speak to a web designer, or design the website yourself.
SEO
SEO (which stands for search engine optimization) is an essential piece of technology to understand and use within your business to get ahead of the competition. You don’t have to know exactly how it works, or be at ease with knowing all about algorithms and computer programming, but you should understand the basic principles of SEO and use it to your advantage wherever possible.
There are many different aspects to SEO and you will need to do some thorough research or use a third party to help you, but some of the pointers you can implement yourself include keywords and phrases. You can use these important keywords within your website content, especially your blog. Once the search engine ‘bots’ pick up on these phrases, they will place you higher in the search results, making it more likely that you will be picked by someone searching for whatever it is you sell. Making sure your blog is updated on a regular basis as ever-changing content is always important for SEO purposes, as is using links to both external sites and internal pages.
Using SEO in the right way will help your website be ranked higher in search engine results, and this will again give you a trustworthiness and longevity, and will encourage people to click through to you rather than anyone else.
YouTube Ads
When you last watched YouTube, you will almost certainly have noticed that there were ads. These can be wonderful ways to get ahead of the competition, especially as you can even essentially interrupt your competitors’ own videos to show the people watching (who already have an interest in what you do) more about yourself.
Making a video doesn’t have to cost a lot of money, and you can even do it on your smartphone or tablet if you have the right apps, but the end result must look professional. If it does not, you will be doing your brand much more harm than good.
Create Surveys
Finding out what your customers really think about what you are doing, and discovering if there is any other way you can improve how you serve them is crucial if you want to grow and be successful, and it is yet another way that you can get ahead of the competition; knowing where your strengths and weaknesses lie means you can work on them to become the very best.
You can use tech to send our specially designed surveys to your customers who have opted into your mailing list, asking them to complete the form to give you some ideas on how to improve. Not everyone is going to take the time to fill in the form, but the ones who do will give you some important information that you can work on.