There are ways of distinguishing yourself from the competition, but it’s difficult when you aren’t fully ready for the challenges that are ahead of you.
One of the most troublesome times for a startup is the midpoint. The point where your business isn’t quite ready to become a fully-fledged small business, yet isn’t small or innocent enough to still be called a startup. During this period, it can be difficult to try and establish a relationship with your customers in order to stay afloat in an industry that’s full of competition. There are ways of distinguishing yourself from the competition, but it’s difficult when you aren’t fully ready for the challenges that are ahead of you. So to help you set yourself apart, here are a couple of fantastic tips.
Keep Your Startup Stay Afloat in a Sea of Competition Click To TweetFocus on customer relations
The relationship between you and your customers has to be solid. You need to make sure you’ve got a customer base that loves what you do and enjoys your product. In order to accomplish this, you have to keep an open channel of communication between you and your customers. For instance, if your customers have no way to contact you, then you’re going to have a hard time making any money. If your customers have to wait several days before hearing a response from you, then they’re going to find it hard to relay information, feedback and comments. Make sure you’re not blocking these customer relationships from flourishing and keep an eye on the feedback you get.
Build your digital brand
Your brand can be in many different places at once on the internet—that’s the beauty of it. If you’re going to create a business that utilises the internet in some shape or form, then you need to look at points such as social media advertising and eCommerce website design. The former simply means that you have to use social media in order to get the most out of your online promotional campaigns. The latter means that you need to tailor your website towards your audience and make it easily accessible so they enjoy using it. For instance, you need to make product descriptions clear and you need to make it easy to purchase goods or services from you. You don’t want to be known as a technophobic company with a terrible website or dashboard, so focus on building your digital brand by showing your audience you know your way around a computer.
Diversify or specialize?
Another important point to focus on is diversifying your startup or keeping it specialized. You need to focus on trying one or the other because you won’t have resources for both. You either have to develop more products to reach a wider audience, or you need to refine your best-selling product so that it suits the market that you want to break into. This can be difficult to balance and it depends largely on the type of audience you have. Remember to listen to their feedback and make a judgement on what you prefer to do: do you want to reach a wider audience or do you want to please the audience you already have?
