Thanks to new innovations in ecommerce starting a business has never been easier. There’s a lot of opportunity out there for the taking but this also means that there’s a lot of competition as well. With so many people out there competing to win it’s important that you find a way to set yourself apart.
There’s no “one way” to win in a competitive market but there are ways to create a winning strategy. Setting yourself apart from your competition is easier said than done but in the cutthroat ecommerce environment it’s sink or swim.
Know Your Business
Socrates once said, “To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom.” In this case to know thyself is the beginning of success. Before you ever begin to think about your competition (which we’ll get to later) you need to understand your own business.
Understanding the strengths of your own business and brand is essential when you’re trying to set yourself apart.
Simon Sinek wrote in his book Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action, “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.”
Here’s his popular Ted Talk that goes in depth on his theory of the golden circle.
Take a minute to list out all the strengths of your business from the skills of you/your team and also the strengths of your product. This is a great exercise because you might discover something you hadn’t considered before because it’s just what you do.
Pinning down your why might take some time but that doesn’t mean you should just skip over it. Finding your why can help you develop a much more focused brand.
Know Your Competition
Once you’ve taken a step back to evaluate yourself it’s time to evaluate the competition. What are their strengths? What are their weaknesses? Keep in mind that you’re not researching your competition so that you can copy them but so that you can beat them!
Make sure that you check the following areas
- Their website
- Product pages
- Offers/sales
- Social media
- Facebook Ads
- Email campaigns
- Customer reviews
Write down a list of your competitors strengths and weaknesses so that you can know where to attack from. For example if their Instagram game is on point it might be better to focus on a different social platform that you can dominate.
Know Your Customer
Here we’ve saved the best for last. The best way to beat your competition is to understand your customers and deliver on that. If you don’t know your customer then you don’t know:
- Who to target
- Where to target them
- How to talk to them
- What type of images/videos will attract their attention
- Their pain points/problems
- And more
It’s a great first step to create a customer avatar to really help you get to know your target customer and demographic. There are a lot of worksheets out there that can help you really get into the details of your customer. I really like this one from Digital Marketer. Fill it out and keep it on hand to review regularly so that you can stay focused.
Talking to real customers is also really important step in the process of getting to know your customers. You can do this by:
- Reviewing customer reviews
- Talking to customers (in-person, on the phone)
- Sending out customer surveys
- Monitoring social media
Putting it All Together
Once you’ve taken the time to gather all this information it’s time to put it to use. It can even be helpful to assemble these details into a venn diagram so you can get a visual of how you, your competition and your customers all relate to each other.
Where your strengths, your competitors weaknesses and your ideal customer all line up that’s when you’ve found a great strategy!
For example if you’re great at Facebook marketing and your competition isn’t but your customer spends a lot of time there, you’ve found a great place to start winning and gaining market share.
Too many times brands try to copy other brands in order to try to win market share and they’re baffled when it doesn’t work. Don’t try to beat your competition at their own game instead find your own way to win.
The Key to Growing Your E-commerce Business
Knowing what you need to do in order to grow your business and then actually going out and doing it are two totally different things. For new and growing e-commerce businesses two of the biggest factors holding you back are time and money.
1. Time: You’re too busy fulfilling orders and/or you literally can’t get orders out the door fast enough.
2. Money: You’re spending too much on overhead expenses, packaging and shipping costs.
That’s why partnering with a third-party order fulfillment company is so important for helping your company grow and scale. With a third-party fulfillment company like Ship Central you can save time, save money and have the room to make more money because you can now scale your business without having to worry about backing up your orders for weeks.
At Ship Central we’ll take care of your order fulfillment needs from warehousing to kitting and more. We love helping e-commerce businesses grow and we’d love to help you too. With our help you can finally put all of your plans into action because we’ll focus on fulfillment so you can focus on growing your business.