What is your Distinctive Competence?
One of the major mistakes that small companies (and large ones) make when marketing their products and services is that they are too tempted to just provide a list of features. Sometimes a major feature is a real differentiator for your offering, but many times what internal employees identify as a wow factor is not all that important to the audience you are trying to solicit business from.
What makes a company stand out, and generates brand awareness and loyal customers is often more about non-product intangibles - true differences that you excel at over and above another company that markets in your same space. For example, many online businesses overlook the things that make customers buy from them and keep coming back. This is your Distinctive Competence. Some examples include:
- Deep commitment to an online shopping experience that has been throroughly vetted from the customer's perspective - one that makes it incredibly easy to figure out which product or service they need and a checkout process that is seamless and doesn't repetitively ask for the same information.
- Expertise! Of course it's vital to have engineers, designers, support personnel that are product experts, but the real bang for the buck comes from being an expert in your market. Know what your customers want, deliver it, and be able to articulate it.
- Your impeccable customer service that offers multiple avenues to reach you and provides a timely customized response, not an FAQ.
- Your product development process that enables you to more quickly add new features that customers request - plus an easy way for your customers to ask for such enhancements.
- Your unique expertise in a vertical market that makes competing horizontal applications too "heavy" for a particular industry or target user group. This also requires some discipline and management committment to pick a market and stick with it and resist the urge to make your offering one-size-fits-all unless there are truly features that benefit multiple markets. This approach establishes your credibility as an undisputed expert in your target market.
- Online help and pointers that make it much easier for your customers to conduct their business with you without having to make a phone call.
Whatever your Distinctive Competence is, it should be boldy promoted on your website and backed up with real claims and execution. This philosophy will help make your company truly outshine your competetors, and increase your customer loyalty and culminate in business success.
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Wednesday, November 12, 2008
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What Should My Web Site Registration Forms Ask?
Registration forms are a great way to get information from visitors to your web site. However, asking too much information from your visitors may reduce the number of people who register. So, how do you get good information without scaring away your potential customers? The following points might help you decide what to ask on your forms:
- Require the least amount of information possible - if you can get by with just a name and email address, great. If you need a phone number, company name, title, or more, you won't get as many leads but the leads you get might be better quality.
- Make the reward for registering as strong as possible - making customers register just to get more product information can be counterproductive; many won't register. Providing registration information for access to product demonstrations is usually acceptible for most customers. Some people provide a monthly drawing for people who register on the web site (everyone likes free iPods).
- Make sure you tell your potential customers you won't give information they submit to anyone else. Who needs more email?
Registration forms provide your sales team with quality leads, if done effectively. You can even get leads from your web site automatically populated in your CRM application, like Salesforce.com (ask us how).
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Tuesday, September 09, 2008
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Is your web site a marketing tactic or is it a business strategy?
Before you get concerned, it’s okay for your web site to be either one of these. Many businesses use their web site entirely as a marketing tactic; the same way they would use a television, magazine, or newspaper advertisement. Other companies have developed their web sites in a way that coincides with and even streamlines day-to-day business processes; thus making their web site a part of their business strategy - even providing a unique competitive advantage in some cases.
Business strategy is the long-term vision of an organization which defines a competitive advantage for the business through its utilization of resources and intellectual property to meet and exceed the needs of markets and stakeholder expectations.
Most businesses could exploit the benefits of the internet by employing tactical marketing practices along with on-line applications that have strategic value on web sites. People expect web sites to essentially be informational advertisements - web sites have become an acceptable form of marketing products and services. If you also use your web site to streamline your business process(es), your business, your customers, and your stakeholders benefit.
So, if your web site is being used as primarily a marketing tactic, you may have some potential to enhance your web site to provide a larger benefit for your company.
Let’s discuss how you currently use your web site and some ideas you have that might add some strategic value to web site. Just submit a comment to get the discussion rolling.
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Sunday, March 30, 2008
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