Standing out from the competition is challenging, especially if you are just starting your business. Chances are, there are plenty of companies that have been doing what your company does for years, and they have already figured out how to earn and maintain a customer base.
So how will you manage to appeal to their customers? The answer is simple: Show that you can deliver even better results. But communicating that message requires a level of creativity on your part.
Marketing Tricks
This article will provide you with some lesser-known marketing tricks that will help you get noticed.
Use Your Competitors
Free press is almost always positive for businesses — even small ones. Getting journalists to cover your brand is a critical tactic that will help you get in front of more eyes. But it isn’t easy to earn the attention of major publications.
One way to be featured alongside your competitors is to see which publications are covering them. You can set up a Google Alert including the names of your competitors and you will get a notice each time they are mentioned on the internet.
Find out which outlets are featuring your competitors and reach out to the journalists who are reporting on them. You might not be successful with each reporter you contact, but if you keep at it, some will be willing to give your company some attention.
Automation Is Your Friend
If you’re a new entrepreneur, it’s likely that you’re overwhelmed by the many duties business ownership entails. Every day, you’re probably wearing a new hat, and it’s easy to let some of the more important aspects of growing a successful enterprise fall by the wayside.
Marketing is one of the most essential duties that you must undertake if you want to be a successful entrepreneur. After all, having superior products doesn’t mean anything if nobody knows about them, right? Unfortunately, marketing is quite time-consuming.
Content creation, social media, and copywriting take an immense level of effort, and if it’s not done well, you can waste a lot of time and money. But there is a way to make this easier: Automation.
Whenever possible, you should automate your marketing functions so that you can free up more time for other jobs. There are several different types of software that can automatically share content on social media, track vital metrics, reach customers through email, and test your landing pages. The only downside is that the software used to perform these tasks are not free, and some can be pretty pricey. But if you’re trying to stand out from your competition, they are worth the investment.
Strategic Pricing
Pricing is one of the most overlooked keys to attracting more customers. Many business owners don’t put as much thought into the amount they are charging their customers, and this is a serious mistake.
One strategy that has worked for most companies is to create products that are priced in a way that drive attention to your higher-reveneue items. Here’s an example. Let’s say you run a coffee shop and you only have two sizes for your drinks. The smaller size is sold at $4 while you have priced your large drink at $7. Try adding a medium size and price it at $6. This will make it more likely that a customer will choose the larger size since it’s only $1 more than the medium.
Take A Loss
This strategy might seem counterintuitive at first, but it works if you do it the right way. Conventional wisdom says that you must always make a profit on a sale even if the margins are thin. But sometimes, it might make sense to sell a product under cost. Why? Because these items will get the customers to your site or to your store.
If customers are enticed to visit your site because you’ve got a great deal on a particular item, then that gives you more traffic, which increases the likelihood that these individuals will buy other products as well. Of course, you want to be very careful with this strategy. If you notice that this particular product isn’t encouraging people to buy more, you might consider the same tactic but with a different product or service.
Effective marketing requires an out-of-the-box approach. You must use proven marketing techniques in a way that your competition isn’t. Using the tips in this article will provide you with the means to attract more people to your website and your place of business.
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