If your business is in a saturated market, it’s going to feel like you just blend in most of the time. Your “beige” business feels stagnant because people aren’t coming through your doors like they once were, your inbox isn’t flooded like it used to be, and your bank account is probably showing similar shades of beige.
Making your brand stand out from the competitor down the street seems like a trivial task at times. You price your services lower, thinking this will attract those shopping for discounts and deals. You throw all the bells and whistles into your offer, thinking more is what your customers want. You change your service hours so there’s no possible second of the day you can miss a prospect reaching out for help, but this has left you burnt out and exhausted.
Let’s talk about ways you can make your business stand out from the competitors, without burning yourself into the ground.
Talk To Specific People, Not Everyone
If you’re trying to market to everyone, you’re marketing to no one. You’ve probably heard this before, but I’ll beat it into the ground: You can’t solve everyone’s problems, because you’ll solve no one’s problems.
When you’re building your business, the more narrow you can get on your niche and ideal client, the better and more effective your marketing message will be. Start by identifying who you can best serve, and who you want to work with. It’s important to be able to actually solve your customer’s problems, but it’s also important that it’s actually types of people you enjoy working with.
Speak About Problems, Not Features
Small business owners have a tendency to focus on all of the shiny objects they’ve packed into their offer when they’re selling someone on their services. We think that if we talk about all the amazing things included in this offer, people will be more likely to buy it.
The truth is though, people want to know that you can solve their problems. The more connected you can help them feel to the things that are pain points for them, and the better you can show them the path how you are the one to solve those problems, the more likely they will be to buy from you.
The rule of thumb here: If you’re talking more than the customer is, you’re probably missing the mark.
Keep asking questions, keep digging in, and then and only then, show them the path of how you are the one who can solve those problems.
Customer Experience
One of the easiest ways to distinguish you from your competitors is to just do it better than them. By creating an experience of how your customers comes through your business from start to finish, you increase the likelihood that you will solve the problem they initially came to you with, they will want to shout your name from a mountain top to all their friends and family, and they will do the marketing for you.
Social proof and referrals are such a strong way to grow your business. There’s nothing better than enjoying working with the people you work with, helping them achieve the things they’re looking to do, and then turning around and picking up referrals of more people just like them. This all starts from the moment they walk through your door or make contact with you. Having a Client Journey established to track your customers is essential to differentiating yourself from your competitors.
You can avoid being just another “beige” small business by locking down your niche, narrowing down your marketing message, and creating a customer experience from the moment they make contact with you. These are small tweaks that can lead to massive changes in differentiating you from your competitors down the street.
If you’d like to sit with our PDBM team and brainstorm about what’s working for you and what isn’t, see what opportunities you have in the next 90 days to grow your business, and walk away with a 3-step action plan to scale, book a Brainstorm Session here!