If you’re starting a business today, no doubt, you’ll be all too familiar with the statistics being peddled around business failure; where it is estimated that only half of start-ups will make it past the five year mark; and just one third make it past ten years.
In addition to cash-flow, the fundamental to success or failure – is marketing. See, you can have the best idea, product, or service in the world… but if you can’t market yourself effectively, then you are going to struggle to get customers – and a business without customers is like a car without fuel; it’s only a matter of time before it breaks down!
As a start-up business, you need to differentiate yourself with a strong unique selling proposition that is the backbone of your business.
Whilst an innovative tech start-up can meet this requirement based on the uniqueness of its revolutionary technology, there is little differentiation a pizza takeaway or personal trainer can have… meaning there’s often an over-reliance on low-cost pricing which often leads to the business entering into a price war, which is bad news for everyone, except the customer that ends up getting a great deal.
The challenge with building your business around price, rather than differentiation, is that you are subject to ever diminishing profit margins (as others lower their prices in order to gain market share)… and you won’t have anything unique about your business that puts it in good stead to stand the test of time.
This article explores a number of ways you can make your business stand out from the competition by positioning yourself as an expert and your business as the go-to provider, within a particular niche… meaning you market yourself as a specialist rather than a generalist.
WHAT IS A NICHE?
A niche is a focused subset of a particular market. If you were to think about pet food, for example, we could chunk that down to cat food and dog food – but this is still a very broad market. If, however, we were to look at a subsection of this market, as an example, gourmet pet food – this could be considered a niche market. Even more effective, however, would be to take this one step further to organic gourmet pet food.
Essentially, you want something broad enough to have a large enough customer base but targeted enough to position your company as the “go to” provider within that subsection.
WHY HAVING A NICHE IS IMPORTANT
In broader markets (e.g. pet food) you are up against competitors with massive marketing budgets and global brands. As a small business owner, one of the core challenges you face is that of people finding out about you; particularly as a start-up.
Often, the broad markets are very crowded and well established. If we were to think of this from a marketing spend perspective you want to get the greatest return on investment possible, and in spending money on digital marketing the cost per click for an advert relating to something broad like “dog food” is going to be much higher than something more niche such as “organic dog food” because the search term is less competitive.
It also means that the person clicking on your advert is a more relevant customer looking for your particular solution. Realistically, you don’t want thousands of people clicking on your adverts – you only want qualified prospects – and the more niche focused your marketing is, the better the conversion rate will be meaning the higher the return on your investment.
RELEVANCE IS KEY
The underlying theme to make your business stand out from the competition is to be as relevant to your target audience as possible – because this relevancy is the glue that connects the customer (person seeking a solution) with your brand (company offering a solution).
This is why landing pages focused on a very specific problem have dominated the internet; indeed, many marketers – including big brands – are focused on driving traffic to niche landing pages rather than their main website… due to enhanced relevance. There are a number of landing page creators available that are incredibly simple to use, as they offer a visual editor meaning you don’t need to meddle with any coding.
See, there’s no better way for a company to gain the attention of its target audience than to focus on solving a very specific problem – as the relevancy this has will speak directly to your target audience.
When you stop focusing on the product you offer and start focusing on the solution you offer to a particular problem – you begin to stand out from the competition in a way that is much more sustainable than competing on price, special offers, or the fact you have a huge colourful banner outside your shop window!
The key tip is to start focusing on resolving a pain or struggle your customer faces and market your business in a way that marks you out as the specialist solution provider that can solve their pain, and give them what they want, in very specific “end result” terms.