Contributed post
The world we live in today, particularly when it comes to our digital lives, is cluttered with if not bombarded by distracting marketing messages vying for our attention.
Essentially we have become overloaded with “marketing noise” and this can make it really tricky to stand out from the crowd when it comes to promoting your business to your target audience.
It can be tough to start a business on a budget, as even niche industries such as specialist excel consultancy services are finding it hard to break through the clutter and connect with the right person at the right time due to the amount it costs to reach a single prospect.
Whilst this is being made easier with facebook’s hyper-personalised targeting, this precision comes at a cost, and many business owners simply can’t afford to connect with their target audience by sending a tailored message specifically relevant to their interests; despite knowing how beneficial and effective this would be in terms of attracting new customers.
The most important thing if you want to stand out from the crowd and connect with your audience is to ensure you are relevant to them, in the sense that you want to position your product, service or company as something that can solve a particular problem they face.
Within this theme of being relevant, it’s a good idea to focus your marketing (and business) efforts on a particular niche and become recognised as the go to expert within this narrow market rather than a generalist within a broader market.
In many ways it’s much more viable to be a small fish in a small pond than it is to compete with bigger fish in a bigger pond – unless you have tons of cash to invest in advertising campaigns.
Of course, at the core of your niche strategy you will need a unique selling proposition that differentiates you from the crowd and draws people in on the basis you have a solution to a problem that’s causing them some level of emotional pain.
Remember, people buy with their hearts not with their heads. They use their rational mind to justify a purchase but it is their emotional heart that triggers them to take action and buy your product. For this reason, you want to connect with the audience’s pain and struggle by showing how you can ease this particular strain of emotional pain.
This article explores a number of ways you can make your business stand out from the competition, by positioning yourself and your business as the go-to expert within a particular niche.
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. The underlying theme to make your business stand out from the competition and connect with your audience is to be as relevant to their needs as possible; because it’s this relevancy that is the glue which 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 websites due to the laser focused relevance of such a page. There are a number of landing page creators available that are incredibly simple to use.
In summary, there’s no better way for a company to gain attention and connect with its target audience than to focus on solving a specific problem – as this relevancy is what will set you apart from your competition. A final tip is to stop focusing on the product or service you offer and focus more on scratching a particular itch (i.e. focus on the problem you solve) when interacting with your customers.