How to Stand Out from Competitors on the Internet?
To conquer a market, a single watchword: stand out! Today, it is no longer enough to be passionate and to invest deeply in your project to succeed. Competition on the web is getting tougher and ads are more and more present and intrusive. In this context, how can you put your business forward to distinguish it from the competition?
Position yourself on the search engines
Like all companies on the web, your goal is to be present in the first search results. Knowing that 90% of Internet users never visit the second page of results and that the first 3 links receive the majority of the traffic, SEO is essential!
Position yourself yes, but on relevant keywords! You must be visible on keywords relevant to your activities, but also on keywords that have an interesting search volume. It’s about balancing the two: do not try to fight over keywords that are too competitive, but position yourself on broader and more precise queries. Keep in mind your goal: to bring qualified traffic to your site to turn them into leads and then customers!
Another way to quickly position yourself on relevant keywords is AdWords ads. A properly optimized paid campaign will allow you to appear above your competitors directly. Optimization is the key; many techniques can lower the cost of acquisition and increase your conversion rate.
But first, to choose your keywords and attract qualified traffic, you must know your target!
Know your target market
To communicate the right message to the right people, you must know who you are talking to. You do not need to bombard content users if it’s not targeted. For a person to be interested in your content, it must have been thought and designed for him! So, for your content to be consumed and engage your prospects as a customer, you need to customize it to the maximum. The message must not only address the right person, but must also address a specific need or question at the right time of the purchase cycle!
To know your customers better, start by talking with your colleagues and with your salesmen, do interviews with your customers, identify the profile of your customers (their needs, their frustrations, their fears, their preferred means of communication …) and pay attention that all this information may vary depending on the place of the prospect in the conversion path.
Make yourself unique
Now that you know who you are talking to, you must attract them! The first step to stand out from the competition is to analyze their communication methods. A competitive analysis will allow you to draw inspiration from the best practices of your competitors, to distinguish their strengths and weaknesses to be able to take the opposite direction. And yes, competitive analysis is also learning from the mistakes of others to build your own digital strategy.
Concretely, to stand out, you must avoid being transparent. This may seem obvious and yet it is a common commercial mistake. So avoid offering a service or product a little different from that of your competitors, or a little cheaper, but ultimately not that much. To make yourself known and to challenge, you must innovate! It’s up to you to know what will be your workhorse; an unbeatable price, a superior quality or a product / service that does not exist anywhere else!
Think long term
It’s about establishing a real digital strategy tailored to your needs. You must think about your return on investment in the short term, but also in the long term! Keep in mind that your competitors are also studying and putting in place their own strategies. It is therefore a question of not being overwhelmed: the analysis and the study of the results must lead to constant optimizations at the risk of making you advance by your competitors!
