You’re probably aware that you have competitors in your industry and you may even be checking out what they’re doing now and then. But are you doing enough to get ahead of your ecommerce competitors?
What do you do with the information you’ve gathered about them? How do you differentiate your product and stand out from the competition?
In the crowded ecommerce world, scoping out your competitors isn’t enough anymore. What you do with the knowledge you have about them is what matters.
However, fret not because you can beat the competition and maximize profits using marketing strategies and best practices that we’ll go into in this article.
- Analyze your competitors
- Know your customers
- Solidify your brand
- Optimize your website
- Connect with your audience
Keep reading to find out!
Analyze your competitors
The first way to stay ahead of your competition is to learn from them. This practice helps you spot growth opportunities, as well as trends and potential problems. Competitor analysis is one of the most impactful things you can do for your business.
The first step is to acknowledge that you have competitors and let them motivate you to grow. Don’t be disheartened.
Next, identify who these competitors are. Some are more obvious than others. Use digital tools made for this such as Panoramata, or do a quick Google search to find your competitors.
After that, study your competitors’ digital marketing strategies. Check their social media pages, website, landing pages, and ads. Notice patterns in their content calendar, their posting frequency, and email sequences they send to newsletter subscribers.
You can even become a customer and try out their products (or order from their ecommerce store). This will give you ideas for improvement while also determining your strengths.
Know your customers
Just as it’s imperative to know your competitors, you should also know your customers to stay competitive in ecommerce. After all, attracting and retaining customers is the goal.
Learn what your target audience and existing customers’ desires and pain points are. What goals do they want to achieve? What price points are they willing to pay for?
Knowing this information will help you think like a customer and understand what makes your products enticing to them, thereby making it easy to stay competitive and define and capture your target market.
Solidify your brand
Having a solid brand is half the battle. When you know your business and your unique selling point, you can build your brand and attract customers who identify with your brand’s values.
A strong brand identity is more likely to be noticed. Dare to be different and you’ll stand out. Give your potential customers a reason to pick you over your competitors. A strong brand and value proposition helps with that.
As a bonus, you won’t be competing on price once your audience sees the value you offer that they can’t get anywhere else.
However, your brand should be positive. Your customers should have positive thoughts about your brand. This is influenced by factors such as reviews, advertising, customer service, and social media pages.
Your branding should be evident on all materials you put out. Communicate your brand effectively across all channels so visitors can quickly grasp it and see how you’re different from your competitors.
Optimize your website
Nothing drives away a potential customer quicker than a poorly designed website. Your website is in most cases not only your storefront but your entire store so you should make the customer experience as polished and pleasant as possible.
Visitors judge your website’s layout and aesthetics in a split second and decide if they want to continue browsing or not in that short span of time. Therefore, you need to optimize your website to ensure they stay on your page and purchase your products.
Ways to do this include using contrast and color to guide visitors through your website, and implementing a responsive design, making your website mobile-friendly.
Offer local language options for international audiences. A local language customer service representative is a plus, too. Aside from that, it’s a nice touch to display prices in the currency of the country your website visitor is browsing from.
Keep your website visitors engaged by using high-quality images, videos, animations, and games on your site. Improve your product descriptions and make sure your product pages are SEO-friendly.
These changes will drastically improve the user experience and increase conversions.
Connect with your audience
Most of your website visitors won’t buy from you right away so keeping in touch and nurturing relationships with them is crucial for future conversions.
To do this, meet your target audience where they are. Choose the platforms they’re hanging out on and communicate with them and provide valuable content.
When you engage with your audiences through email, social media, and your blog, you also educate them about your product and help them see your brand and unique value proposition.
You don’t have to be on every social media platform, though, because you’ll risk spreading yourself too thin. It’s also a waste of resources if you try to be everywhere.
Do your research and see which platforms are a good fit for your audience. Then, be approachable, build rapport, and create a space for your brand to talk to your audience without being sales-y.
Wrapping Up
Competition should be an impetus to improve your ecommerce brand, not demotivate you. You have a lot to learn from your competitors so always check in with them to keep abreast of changes and trends.
Making improvements little by little will bear fruit soon enough. Soon, your competitors will be taking notes from you!
