Since the internet boom of the 1990s, the online space has grown and grown. It is now the place where people do their work, enjoy entertainment and socialise with their friends. It’s also become an incredibly competitive space for businesses, who are now participating in a global marketplace in the online world.
It’s become more important than ever then, that businesses remain competitive online. But how do they do it? Here are the top seven ways that they do it, that you can learn from when running your own online business.
Lower prices when you can
It may seem obvious — if your price is lower than the competition’s you’ll be likely to attract more customers. But you also don’t want to sacrifice the potential revenue you can make, too. It’s best to be strategic about a ‘low price’ move. If you lower your prices initially you can generate more traffic and attract new customers. Before making a purchase on a product or service, people conduct price comparisons on the items they need, so if you’ve got a very appealing one over others on the market, it’s likely they’ll go your way. You can always raise your prices for future customers, but this is a good way to build up new business.
Highlight your convenience
Show your customers how convenient your product or service can make their lives. Take online casinos, for example — while long term game players may be used to playing at land-based casinos, online casinos have targeted them by showing how much easier it can be to play online. With benefits like the accessibility and ability to play their favourite casino online games at any time, from any place. It’s one of the reasons that online casino games and mobile banking has become so popular at the moment, with more than a third of the revenue in the UK coming from remote gaming. It’s the convenience aspect that is one of the reasons that online casinos so popular in the entertainment industry.
Give them a reason to try
Some customers are very attached to their favourite brands when it comes to a product and service. And if you’re offering something similar it can be difficult to entice them away. One of the ways that you can do this is to get them to try you out and get hooked on what you have to offer and why it’s different. Distributing free samples, giving free trials and offering deals to get people started is part of the way they can buy into what you’ve got to sell. And if they like it, it’ll push them to stick with you instead of what they’ve done previously.
Start local, grow global
It’s a global marketplace, but customers are still keen to support local brands. You can leverage this by targeting your local market early on, and generate momentum for your brand over time. This could mean opening a brick and mortar retail location or using local-specific words to optimise your website. By narrowing your demographic you can target their needs even better, and reduce the number of companies that are directly competing with you. So when in doubt, start in your online backyard — and grow out to the rest of the world from there.
Target your niche
One of the ways to remain competitive online is not to be too generalised and really drill down on — and showcase — what makes you different. Customers like a specialist, and if you can be that special offering and the best at what you do, it’ll be an easier to sell to them. Also, targeting and defining your niche is great from a search engine optimisation standpoint, allowing you to make better use of keywords and increase your webpage’s rankings.
Offer something different
Probably one of the best ways to stand out from your competition is to offer something that’s different to them. Obviously if it’s a completely unique product or service, you won’t have any competition at all. But in your shared market, you can do that by giving out discounts, having a different design on your website or an especially unique brand that will attract new customers to you. Of course, there’s a multitude of ways to do this but finding the one that works best for you — and your market — will help you to stand out in the long run.
Focus on your customer service
Customer service really matters — even if it’s online. In fact, customer service can make even more of a difference in the internet world, where transactions are being made all digitally and your customer may have questions they need answered. So many people now are used to having several options including telephone, email and live chat; and more than ever they expect their queries to be responded to quickly and efficiently.
Getting customer service right can really give you a boost over the competition. Many people leave reviews on places like Trust Pilot and Google Reviews, and so many of these are complaints (or compliments) when it comes to customer service. It can really make a huge different when it comes to standing out from the competition online. And word of mouth and referrals are still huge. If someone has had a good experience with your customer service team they’re very likely to pass that message onto others!
