What makes a customer choose one brand over another, and how can you stand out from your competition?
For example, both McDonald’s and Burger King serve burgers and fries, yet McDonald’s is worth $130.4 billion while Burger King is just $7.1 billion.
Learn the secret to success for businesses like McDonald’s and other international hits faced with fierce competition yet still managing to dominate the market. Let’s dive into the steps you can take to attract more customers than your competition.
Key Takeaways
- Don’t find how you can be better than your competition. Find how you can be different.
- Customer experience is the top priority of most businesses going into 2022.
- Increase your brand awareness through customer reviews, support of causes, and an attractive appearance.
Start by Readjusting Your Mindset
When you hear competitor, your mind might go straight to a competition. But that is not what we are discussing today.
If you think of marketing like a competition, you will lose money trying to outperform your competitors. However, if you switch to a mindset of standing out from your competitors, you will invest all your money in marketing your strongest selling points, which yields better results as consumers move through your sales pipeline.
7 Ways to Stand Out from Your Competition
Here are seven strategies you can use to achieve the goal of standing out.
1. Establish Brand Awareness
Consumers are more likely to purchase from a brand they recognize. That’s why brand awareness is a critical step towards standing out among your competition. For example, the brand name Q-Tips has become so widespread that many consumers replace the term cotton swab with the brand name to describe the product. That is the epitome of product awareness.
While not many brands receive enough recognition to become synonymous with a product name, you should still strive to be one of the first brands people connect to your services or products. You can get your name out to your market using an omnichannel approach. However, if you want to stand out in a competitive niche, you should consider marketing through channels your competition hasn’t touched yet.
2. Focus on Their Customer Experience
Nearly half of businesses will prioritize customer experience over the next five years because it is essential to build strong relationships with consumers. Additionally, 86% of customers are willing to pay more for an excellent experience.
You don’t have to lower your prices to attract customers. Instead, shift your focus to creating the best experience for your customers so that they return and remain loyal to your brand.
Here are some ideas to incentivize new customers and reward loyal customers.
- Offer loyalty points and benefits
- Send exclusive offers and discounts
- Guarantee customer satisfaction
- Create a simple return policy
- Offer personalized customer service
3. Solve Common Customer Problems
Customers will only buy a product if it solves a problem or fills a need. You might create the best product on the market, but if no customer needs it, no one will buy it. That’s why standing out from your competition goes beyond producing quality products. It comes down to creating a product that solves real problems.
Identify common problems that your target audience faces, then market your products as their ideal solution – creating a greater demand for your brand over your competition’s brand. Finally, include those unique traits in your product value propositions, which are at the front of every marketing campaign.
4. Find What Makes You Different
If you are in a market flooded with other brands selling the same product, your selling point will hinge on finding a differentiating factor.
Peloton is an example of how unique marketing can help a business quickly rise in popularity. Even though athletic brands and exercise equipment fills the market, Peloton still became a $4 billion startup. Their secret? They highlight their all-in-one experience and popular trainers. Additionally, instead of competing against other athletic equipment that is often cheaper, their brand compares their services to gym memberships, making their brand seem like the more affordable option.
Finding a differentiating factor means finding a way to be innovative and unique with your brand, so consumers see you as something new rather than another cookie-cutter business. Here are several ways you can be different.
- Market to a specific niche
- Offer unique add-ons to a common product
- Attract visitors through trendy and creative sales techniques
5. Create a Visually Attractive Brand
The appearance of your brand is a significant deciding factor for most customers – even if they don’t consciously realize it is influencing their decision.
A team of researchers performed a study on Airbnb to test how much appearance influences consumers. Their research found that very attractive hosts had a 22% higher occupancy rate than hosts with plain faces.
Attractiveness goes beyond just the appearance of people related to your brand. You should also focus on attractive covers to magazines, website designs, product packaging, and more.
You can also appear more attractive by choosing colors that stand out and images that connect to your audience. Colors can trigger specific emotional reactions like how blue helps people feel calm. At the same time, red puts people on high alert and grabs attention. When you pair a strategic color scheme with images featuring people of the same demographic as your market, you are more likely to attract consumers – even if the product is the same as your competitors.
6. Let Customers Sell You to Other Customers
People rely on the reviews of other people for making purchasing decisions. One study showed that for every star a business gained on Yelp, they also saw a 5-9% increase in revenue. You can help your business stand out among your competitors by encouraging more positive feedback from previous customers so that your brand will always show up at the top of searches by ratings or customer suggestions.
You can also help encourage more peer-to-peer promotion by leveraging social media influencers. They already have a large following of viewers who trust their opinion. Therefore, when they promote your product, those consumers are more likely to think positively of your brand.
7. Share Your Brand’s Values
Your brand’s values matter to 71% of consumers who choose to shop with companies that believe in the same causes or morals. If your business has a cause it cares about, that should be part of your marketing campaign to set you apart from your competition.
Some examples of common shared beliefs businesses use in marketing include:
- Eco-friendly
- Cruelty-free
- Supportive of diversity
- Family-focused
- Women-owned
Your values should be more than a marketing ploy. You should financially support causes aligned with your values or host events related to your cause. Then your consumers can see your sincerity, and you have a chance to connect to new like-minded consumers.
We Can Help Your Business Stand Out
At Boom Communications Group, we ignite growth in businesses through our development and sales strategies that are as unique as you are.
Contact us today to learn about what services are right for your business.