Competitive advantage isn’t easy to gain. Especially within these times of high competition and saturation existing in almost any industry. There are big players involved in each of the business niches and they make the survival of startups quite a challenge. Fortunately, there are various marketing and customer acquisition channels existing right now to reach out to potential customers.
The digital world has opened a wide array of opportunities for individuals who want to get going with minimum entry costs. It just takes a bit of skill and expertise to set up a company’s digital profile at various online marketplaces and look to earn revenue. While there may be some costs attached to a high-end website where you would have to invest in some money. There do exist several easy to operate website builders like WordPress, but the answer to the question of how to build a database, PHP & MySQL driven website still remains with professional developers.
If your business hasn’t gone online yet then there is quite some worrisome situation for you. Technology-based services are evolving quite rapidly in recent times and web platforms, mobile applications are taking over the traditional business operational mediums gradually. It is not just you need to have a digital presence where each of the business is looking to go online, an emphasis needs to be laid upon how strong and impactful the digital presence is.
How Strong Digital Presence Correlates With Competitive Advantage?
Before we jump into this relation of digital presence with a competitive advantage, let’s define what it means by an impactful digital presence. First of all, we need to see a stellar business website with outspoken landing pages communicating about the company’s offerings. This website needs to have all the essential features and qualities like attractive color schemes, fast loading times, contact information, social profiling, and quite others.
Secondly, a company needs to have quite an attractive social profiles with complete business information. The content needs to be up to the mark at each stage representing a business to the best of its potential. Thirdly, the company needs to look active on digital platforms. If there goes an impression that the business is inactive or there are no blog or social postings for quite a time, there is a high probability that the potential lead is going to browse away. Furthermore, the graphics work does not require to be boring for both website and social media platforms.
Well, you might have got the idea with all these tasks done profoundly, a business is surely going to build some fortunes. When a business is doing well digitally, it is bound to have a competitive advantage over its competition. This means that customers will always differentiate them and give preference over other digital businesses. Also, you need to remind customers of your existence if you haven’t become a well-renowned brand yet.
What Activities Contribute To Strong Digital Presence?
You don’t need to jump blindly into anything, especially within the digital marketing domain. In-depth competition analyses need to take place before you determine the future course of action. With the basic recipes covered that you have a website and social profiling done you need to build upon your digital authority.
Educate your customers
It is imperative to provide value to customers in order to develop a sense that they can differentiate different product qualities. Make them aware of your offerings and services while also providing additional value that would allow them to better analyze prospects. Also, provide complete information about your own offerings so they can decide whether your business is able to solve their problems.
Gain Influencer Votes
Influencer marketing has been a recent phenomenon with the evolution of social media influence. There are tens of influencers that your target audience might be following. If you can get a shoutout from them for your business then it can certainly lead to better conversions and followings. Influencer marketing stats are quite interesting for marketers right now and you would certainly be missing big on social authority if this is not included in marketing budgets.
Instant Customer Support
With the introduction of live chats both for websites and social media platforms, businesses are quite focused on providing instant customer support. Respond to the customer queries at your earliest convenience or they would be moving to another business profile within the next few seconds. Internet and increased competition levels have benefitted customers and they always look for uncompromised customer support services.
Reputation Management
If your business is getting happy customers after the transaction occurs, it is quite essential to enhance your online reputation through them. Ask out them for positive reviews so that this can lead to convincing others to engage with you. Also, you need to keep a check on negative reviews too as this leverages customers more than you. So, if you need to have an authoritative digital presence then reputation management will stay one of the essential components.
Go For PR
Let the world of the internet be an advocate of your business with PR marketing. This is when noteworthy press releases are done and news websites, journalists, bloggers, and various publishers mention information that has been released by a business. Popular brands get PR mentions quite on their own, small businesses are required to make a distinguished effort to do well within this PR marketing domain.
Email Marketing
Well, this is quite an effective direct marketing sales channel available within the digital domain. Websites integrated with email marketing tools like MailChimp do significantly than others. Building upon a subscriber list takes quite some promotional and convincing marketing strategies. If you can do this for your business, then you can promote your content and promotional offerings through Newsletters.
Working On Idea Generation For Competitive Advantage
As we discussed earlier that big players are a barrier to entry for most of the industries. There is a dire need that we work on new ideas to do business for significant competitive advantage. This can certainly be a convincing factor for authority entities to endorse the business activity that is being performed.
You can generate new business ideas based on your problem-solving skills. There are hundreds of problems you see people face in daily life. If you can come up with a solution and generate profit from it then maybe it is a great Entrepreneurial Idea. Some of the ways to generate new business ideas are:
Identify Gaps in the MarketPlace
Find loopholes where existing companies have left the stone unturned and fill up the gap with your Entrepreneurial idea. For instance, an Uber Application was the identification of significant loopholes within the commuting industry. Untapped gaps are to be identified and then work towards progressive solutions that can make lives easier.
Solutions To Problems of Target Audience
Do some research and find where there are difficulties faced by people and what convenience you can provide to them. If you will make their lives easier, they will pay you for doing that. Identify what types of customers you can relate to and look for problems they still face. If anything shoots up, you can fare quite well as you are already familiar with the audience you are going to deal with.
Adding Value to Existing Products or Services
Study existing products and services in your industry and check what value can be added to them which will be beneficial to customers. Identify customer grievances while they interact with any business entity, if you can cover it up for their weaknesses, then profit lies on the table for you.
Use Market Experience
If you have been in the markets for long then the ability to identify any potential business weakness or gap is quite remarkable. Use it to turn your fortunes and come up with a new business idea that can do well within the digital domain also. Nevertheless, you can spend time in the market among potential customers and understand their needs which aren’t currently fulfilled. Whoever person you will talk to, there will be existing pain points and they will tell you once you inquire.
Conducting Market Research
Conduct market research and see how competitors operate in your market niche. Gaining insights on how competitors operate and how their products and services are performing will give perfect ideas on how you can operate.
Make note of opportunities list
Create a list of opportunities in the marketplace you are interested in. As you will be coming across a variety of ideas, you need to note down what opportunity is of interest to you and evaluate them later.
Digital technologies have accelerated businesses’ growth and allowed globalization processes to have much better integration. It is time that business owners work towards a strong online web presence rather than ticking the boxes. Immense opportunities are unlocked and fortunately, each one of us has an equal level playing ground with the use of digital marketing platforms.
