To create a powerful advantage will be as unique as your business idea combined with your dedication to determining the collective sum of your business and management strengths. Translated:
Each company has its own competitive and powerful advantage, and it is fueled by the product or service you offer, the level of customer service you are willing to provide, and the price at which you are able to deliver.
Build on what you do best by thinking beyond your business plan.
In your business plan, you identified all the fundamental elements required to open the doors, to line up the tools you will need to be fully operable, and to possibly obtain funding in the future.
The key to finding your powerful advantage is to keep pressing beyond the fundamentals.
Develop your powerful advantage for your new business by asking:
- What are my core capabilities?
- Who are my real competitors today?
- Is there a need to fill a gap, and how do I do that differently than others?
- What do I offer that is unique to my business my unique selling proposition (USP)?
- What level of service would delight my customers (can I deliver the unexpected)?
- What is the vision for my company? How do I achieve it?
- Is the entire sales and service cycle coordinated? Or is it clunky?
- What do I want my company culture to be if I bring on employees or work with others?
- Am I being an effective and collaborative business partner and if not, could I shift?
- Am I being consistent or delivering consistency?
Once answered, use the insights gained to find ways to develop your business’s powerful and competitive advantage.
Determine whether you will publicize your commitment to this effort, or if you consider part of the advantage to be surprise and delighting, you’re a customer when you deliver.
There isn’t one way to define a powerful advantage, so have a little bit of creative fun in determining what yours will be
How To Create Your Marketing and Sales Plans and Attract Customers
When you were developing your business plan, it was important to identify a target audience and a set of personas and to perform a competitive analysis. Equipped with that information, consider where your target audience might typically research a product or spend some leisure time. Will they frequent a local shopping mall? Do they spend a lengthy amount of time on the internet or looking at social media? Will they be traveling out of airports or train stations?
This information should be included in a document, a sales and marketing plan, that outlines strategies for creating awareness of your product or service.
Pull together your target audience profile, personas, competitive analysis, and assessment of how your potential customers spend their time. Since most people use their time to do a variety of things, such as work, shop, and play, there are most likely several ways to get their attention while they are going about their normal activities. Creating a combination of tactics can help boost awareness more quickly than just creating one marketing piece or establishing a website without driving visitors to your site.
Establish some baseline goals along with a budget before starting any type of marketing activity. Here are a few types of marketing that you might consider using: Digital Ads: Tools such as Rev. Up Now can help you pinpoint and choose your online audience so you can guarantee a number of impressions being displayed to your target audience.
Paid Social: Several social media channels offer self-serve platforms that also allow you to choose your audience type so you can be sure you are not spending advertisement dollars on an audience that would not be interested in your product or service.
Traditional Advertising: For traditional media, such as advertising in a newspaper or in a movie theater, the media channel should be able to provide you with the demographics and viewership so you can make an informed decision.
Events: With events and other in-person opportunities
- besides understanding who will be attending and whether the audience matches your audience profile
- think through the possibility of creating an offer that includes an opportunity for potential customers to provide their email and phone contact information.
Create a form on a small piece of paper or use a sign-up sheet clipped to a clipboard that asks potential customers to share their email and phone contact information.
Inform them that they are signing up to receive future communications.
Be sure to follow up with future promotional opportunities and announcements.
Email: Look for a free or inexpensive tool that allows you to send emails to your contact list. If possible, find a platform that offers some form of metrics so you can see how many people are opening your email, downloading content, or seeking more information.
There are several resources illustrating potential marketing opportunities.
Review at least two to three to determine what is appropriate for your business
How To Make Sales and Land Your First Customers
There are many ways to find new customers, some of which have been around for decades and others that are evolving as technology evolves.
With 88% of consumers performing research online1 before purchasing a product or service, chances are your customers have narrowed their choices before purchasing.
When speaking with a prospective customer, be confident in your product or service and be able to explain or honestly answer any question.
Developing trust online can also be accomplished by asking your customers to review your product, when they are happy with their results. When they are not, make sure you work to rectify their complaint as quickly as possible.
If they post a complaint online, you can respond to let them know that you will contact them directly, if they provide their information.
If you are willing to work to resolve complaints, you will show your audience that you are reasonable.
Understand their motivation and highlight the benefits of your product so you can share why your product is the best solution. If you are not meeting in person, be sure your website showcases your product and states how it will ease the prospective customer’s pain point.
If you already have customers and are seeking ways to find additional customers, there are many opportunities to choose from.
If you are selling products or services to both consumers and businesses, a C2B approach enables you to sift through your customer clients to find among them the subset who also own or run a small business, for example.
If needed, consider using promotional offers either in person or online to entice the buyer to decide.