Building your brand is a job that takes time and effort but there is ONE MAJOR MISTAKE that some entrepreneurs make that can undo ALL of their marketing efforts before they have even begun.
What is it?
Well it’s a three-fold mistake actually:
- Not properly analysing your competition – if you don’t understand them how you can stand out from them?
- Not understanding your audience so you can appeal to them
- Not making an offer to your audience that is appealing and different from your competitors!
There are a lot of “nots” there in that list – and if you know me at all you know there is one word I choose to remove from my vocabulary and that is the word “not”.
So today. let’s turn some of those “nots” around. Let me give you some tips to properly analyse your audience. These tips work for solopreneurs all the way through to large businesses! So let’s dive in:
How to make sure you stand out from the crowd!
Step One: Look at your market and find the top three businesses closest to yours
Do a brief web search to find out which businesses come up when you do a search on your category. Cross-check this by speaking to your team, colleagues or customers and find out which businesses they considered before they looked at your business.
Narrow your list of competitors down to three or four.
Step Two: Critically analyse your competitors and their offers
Next – critically analyse your competitors and their offers. The process I’m about to share with you is something that is done in top advertising and branding agencies worldwide. So how do you critically analyse your competitors?
The best way is to review their online presence – their website and social platforms – and ask yourself these questions:
- What is their style and tone? Look at colours, style of language, type of photos and layout for clues
- What services do they offer?
- What is their offer to their customers?
- Do they have a tagline? If so what is it?
- What are their key messages? What are the major themes they would like you to takeaway from their online presence?
- What social platforms do they use?
- What social platforms are they active on? What sort of things do they talk about and share?
- What is their Google page ranking?
- If you were to summarise their total value offer into just one word – what would it be?
Step Three: Compare your existing offer to your competitors
Take the information from Step Two and compare your presence and offer in each area. Look for the similarities and look for the gaps. The gaps are your clues as to how you will differentiate yourself.
Step Four: Focus on the gaps and what your audience wants
Your offer must always focus on what your audience needs and wants – so look at the gaps and what you know about your audience avatar.
Really look at the gaps and prepare your brand story, your online presence and your offers to address the gaps and your audience offers. You want to make sure your offer hits the sweet spot of irresistibility AND is completely different from your competitors. Your brand voice, style and tone must be fresh, new and appealing to your audience.
So – use these tips to avoid the big branding mistake – jump into the gaps and create an offer that is different from your competitors and also meets your audience’s needs!
Do you need more help in analysing your competitors and your brand? Would you like a step-by-step guide to the process I have outlined above? Or perhaps you need help to get to know your audience to create a great offer for them? If so, we would love to help you. We have a great 5 step workbook that will help you solve these problems. You can
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In the meantime, if you have any questions or comments please feel free to email me at hello@jenramsey.com or connect with me on Facebook here or Twitter here . I’m looking forward to starting a conversation with you.
