As an SME business owner, it’s not always easy to compete head-to-head with larger companies and even with similar-sized competitors. However, by taking the time to understand and engage with your ideal customers, focusing on your user experience within your digital marketing strategy, and differentiating your brand, you can punch above your weight and grow your business, regardless of how competitive your market is.
Understanding Your Ideal Customers
Not many businesses have a marketing budget deep enough to target every single customer configuration, so the most cost-effective strategy for outmanoeuvring your competitors is to focus your efforts on a small number of ideal customer types and perfect your content strategy and user experience to perfectly resonate with their needs.
Your ideal buyers are unlikely to be exactly the same as those of your competitors, so by taking the time to research your ideal customer’s specific pain points, needs, and buying habits, you can create niche marketing strategies that differentiate your business in terms of your unique selling propositions, and help your business to stand apart from its competitors.
Many businesses find it helpful to consolidate this information into ideal customer profiles or buyer personas, using customer surveys, analysing website data, and utilising social media listening tools to gain insight into your target market.
Invest In Digital Marketing And Sales
Digital marketing is a game changer for SMEs working in highly competitive markets, giving you more traction with leads than traditional outbound sales and referral marketing strategies. The best results come from using digital channels as a strategy, rather than as individual tactics, so to combine social media, content marketing, search engine optimisation, and email marketing effectively in a personal synthesis, to increase engagement, drive traffic to your website, and build relationships with your prospects.
In particular, publishing regular high-quality content to entertain, educate, and inform your audience – optimised with the relevant keywords and meta tags – will give you a higher search engine rank and drive more traffic and leads to your website. Use informative web content to capture these leads, and then deploy email marketing to nurture these prospects, promote offers, and guide them through the buyer funnel until they’re ready to become paying customers. By leveraging a wide range of digital marketing channels, you can create a broad-based, strong online presence and expand your reach to attract more customers.
Innovate Your Products, Services, And Business Model
Innovating the products and services you offer, and your service delivery processes themselves, can help make your brand more appealing to customers with specific needs in your sector. Actively look for ways to improve your offerings, create new products, and streamline your operations to improve efficiency and cut costs.
This is a task that embraces your entire team, so encourage your employees to share their innovative ideas and reward them for their contributions. You should also take time to stay up to date on industry trends and understand the emerging technologies that could impact your business – even if you don’t adopt these technologies, your competitors might. By freely sharing your opinions and insights with your customers, you will establish a unique voice within your sector, creating a credible brand authority with which to make sales.
Invest In Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising
If you can’t get a lock-in on the first page of Google due to competition from established competitors, you can bypass the organic results and go straight to the top through PPC advertising. PPC is a paid search strategy that allows SMEs to reach their target audience quickly on search engines like Google and Bing, driving traffic to your site and generating qualified leads. It’s critical to have a well-designed PPC campaign in place for the best results. Research the most effective keywords, write engaging advert content and optimise your landing pages to give your visitors the best experience.
It’s good to remember that this is only a short-term strategy, and should not take replace your on-page SEO which will help your organic ranking in the long run.
Improve Your Website User Experience
Your business website is the face of your company and the first impression that many potential customers will get. Having a well-designed and easy-to-navigate website is, therefore, crucial for keeping visitors on your site and ultimately converting them into sales leads and customers. Effective strategies for improving your website user experience include having a clean and mobile-responsive design, informative content, clear calls to action, intuitive navigation, fast site speed loading times, and attractive images and videos.
What Next?
To find out more about effective marketing strategies to help your small business win more sales and achieve its growth targets, please get in touch with one of our Digital Marketing team today by calling 01332 343281.
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