This is a guest contribution from Emma Henry of True Target Marketing.
There’s no denying that plenty of us are trying to make a living on the internet. The good news is that it’s still early days when it comes to building a successful online business. In reality, very few businesses know how to effectively execute strategic online marketing campaigns. Now is the perfect time for you to take advantage of this gap in the market and outperform your online competition. With some sound advice, a strategic approach, and a solid implementation plan, your online business performance can go from strength to strength.
First Things First
The first thing is to prepare a custom strategy for your online business. To do this, you need to conduct a detailed review of your current online situation. What is currently working well? What are the main issues and the biggest frustrations with your website? What is the goal for your online business 12 months and beyond? Who are your current customers and are they your ideal, highest-value customers? How can you encourage repeat purchases to increase the life time value of your ideal customers?
There are a number of useful analytics tools such as Google Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics and Keyword Research software that can help you to review your current online business and devise the best strategy for your business going forward. Consider engaging in the services of a website marketing expert to assist you with the process of analysing your online business. A professional will have the skills and knowledge to prepare a bespoke, tailored strategy that can reap you huge results.
Then What?
The second step is to implement the necessary changes to your website to help you achieve your online business goals. The aim is to attract more high value customer prospects to your website, encourage them to stay on your site (rather than go to a competitor site), and to persuade them to take some form of action on your site (i.e. make a purchase, call for an appointment, request a quote etc.).
Some specific changes you might need to make to improve the performance of your website include:
- Simplify the site navigation for a seamless, end-user experience.
- Remove unnecessary clutter.
- Include a concise summary of your offerings on your home page linking back to the more detailed products/services pages.
- Include a “Testimonials” and “FAQ” page.
- Align the content of every page with the most relevant, industry specific keyword.
- Develop and improve existing content.
- Optimise your website for the search engines.
- Incorporate multiple, relevant and clear calls to action on your site (for a free quote call xxx, click to buy here, enter your email to receive xxx)
And Finally…
The third and final step to outperform your online competition is to secure your place as the absolute authority in your industry niche. To do this, you need to ensure the content on your website is high quality, unique, and relevant to your specific market, and is better than the content of your online competitors. Create regular, fresh new content around common queries in your industry. Go beyond an FAQ sheet and include a dedicated page with detailed information on typical customer queries. Doing this will ensure that when prospective customers search for those queries in Google, your website page will show up in the search results over and above your competitor pages because your site will be the one with the most informative and relevant information. In time, you will become the “go to” website authority for your industry niche as your customer prospects begin to know, like and trust your brand and your information. Not only will you be perceived as the expert in your field by providing your audience with valuable information, but you will be rewarded by Google as they boost your search engine rankings ahead of your competitors.
In summary, take the time to review your current online operations, implement a strategy to attract more of your ideal customer prospects by improving and optimising your website structure and building up relevant content on your site. Consider engaging the services of a professional, online marketing expert to help you execute this proven and effective three-step strategy. The investment will be well worthwhile when you consider the value you will get from securing highly-targeted new business. Now is the time to start securing a greater share of customers in your marketplace by outperforming your competitors online.
Emma Henry is an Online Marketing Specialist and the owner of True Target Marketing. Emma tailors bespoke online marketing strategies for her clients. She specialises in lead generation, customer conversions, increased website traffic and improved website responsiveness.
Hi Emma,
Interesting read. I do have to agree with removing clutter. I rearranged the menus on my site and actually saw people staying longer. Wish I could find a way to make my site a little more simple
Hi Emma,
I dig your tips. 1 suggestion; I’d break down the longer paragraphs in smaller ones for easier readability. It’ll draw in more readers and boost your shares too, because many folks scan posts.
I like the authority point. People trust experts. Experts create massive amounts of helpful content, promote other experts in their niche and persist like heck to stand out from the crowd. I’m not big on the idea of competition – I like working with instead of against in a Universe of abundance – but I do get doing what it takes to stand out in a noisy, crowded market.
I feel being true to you while creating and connecting makes you noticeable. My blog screams me, from the blog’s theme, to the images on my sidebar, to my writing style. I worked hard to craft my voice but more than anything, simply establishing clarity in who I was and who I wanted to connect with did worlds for me in the standing out department.
Build up relevant content. Another great point here, because folks respond well to value. Add value, become valuable.
Great points all around Emma. I’d simply add that persisting, while doing these things, will make you noteworthy. Folks note the person who shows up day after day, as they soon appear to be all over the place, while quitter, well everybody forgets them.
Thanks much for sharing.
Tweeting in a bit.
Ryan
Emma this is a great post on competition. I love the three ways. One important thing that one can also do is reverse engineer what a competitor is currently doing. Using Google advance features you can see who and where the competitor is posting. You can also see how they have there information like testimonials, products and such.
I will be going through my site again to make sure I have the proper information. Thanks again.
Awesome work, especially information that you provided is very interesting and very helpful it will help many others like me.
Would love to see an article that digs deeper into these steps. Like what’s the time table on it, etc?
Hi Emma,
Nice tips to outperform online competition. You covered basic as well as some beginner tips.
I will love these tips to improve basics. Thank you for this great content… ;)
To be frank, I never planned my blog. Maybe that’s why I am not getting a lot of traffic. But after this post I think I should plan some of my future ventures.
And the third one is the hardest to achieve, it takes some years to become an authority in a niche,
You’ve written ‘remove unnecessary clutter’ can you give me some examples of what that might be? I’m looking at my site and thinking I could make some changes, but I don’t know what to cut down on.
Hi Louise,
I would remove those ads from your page (unless they are making you squillions). Also make your calls to action clear i.e. your phone number at the top of the page is not in strong bold text – it looks too similar to the image (which is a little distracting).
Good luck!
Great tips! Testimonials can definitely help remove hesitations your prospect clients may have. I also place small excerpts on “decision making points” of my websites. I need to do better on pumping out fresh contents regularly.
It’s funny that most businesses have a website, yet so few consider the competition. It is so easy to be in the top ten percent of websites. With a little effort you can really get ahead of most of your competitors.
Can you give some examples of unnecessary clutter? What are you referring to, design elements?
You should look at everything on your page and ask yourself – is this going to lead my visitor/prospect into my sales funnel. If not – ditch it. Examples include unnecessary external ads, information that could be better positioned on another, more relevant page (people tend to ramble on their home page and include info that should be in their about page). Hope that helps!
One thing DNN does to out do or outperform competition is create unique content throughout the day on the fly. Creating unique content on-the-fly throughout the day using speech recognition programs is a great way to get better search engine rankings and provide value site visitors while having the upper hand on your search engine competition. It’s also a fun way to stay inspired towards creating content and providing value eight time to read your blog posts or webpages.
Last but not least, another great way to outperform competitors is to be personal in the “about” section of a blog or website telling people personally about you, the author-founder of the site. It’ll show people that you’re a real human being and not a content creation robot… LOL
The tips are no doubt the healthy ones, but few things always strike my mind as how to develop the existing content to great. Once we have written the post, we get engaged in writing another posts and so on. I am choosing the keywords through Jaaxy, but still the traffic is low. May be my site needs some more time or may be I am doing something wrong. How can I come up of this situation?
Write for your audience not the search engines. Create query based content that will help your audience. Speak with a professional who knows what they are doing regarding keyword research and SEO. You can damage your ability to rank your site if you try to do it yourself or engage the services of someone who does not follow SEO best practice.
Hi Emma,
Good post! Additionally, I’ve bee refactoring my blog posts to keep it Live with latest information and aligned to my improved writing. I guess, not many people do this. People tend to upload content and move on.
These are the big points I picked out from this article:
Simplify the site navigation for a seamless, end-user experience.
Remove unnecessary clutter.
Develop and improve existing content.
Optimise your website for the search engines.
I was aware of these steps, but I did not see the importance in them until I implemented them more.The clutter thing was killing my site load time.
I am beyond grateful for this post. Thank you so much!
Hi Emma,
Thanks for the great tips. Of the three items you mentioned, I believe, the third one is the most difficult one – as it is not that straightforward to establish yourself as an authority. Producing a very high quality content is indeeed a challenge, but in order to stay ahead of the competion, it definitely is the right way forward – and will pay dividends in the long run.
Very Interesting read, Thanks for sharing. You’ve written ‘remove unnecessary clutter’ can you give me some examples of what that might be?
Hi Emma
Those are some really helpful tips, thanks.
What would be your best tip for keeping my blog really user friendly, so it generates shares and creates conversation?
Thanks.
Elise
Hi Elise, Make sure every piece of content you create is empowering, engaging or entertaining. Try to create some interest by covering a “taboo” topic that everyone else is too scared to write about. Make sure you write for your target audience and nobody else – keep it laser focussed. What do they want to know more about? What are the FAQ’s you get that you base some content about?
I don’t steal.. i just get creative with their boring ideas :P I check all my competitors and find out what they are doing best and then do a compilation of all and then try to something totally different
Emma,
I believe your third point is probably the most difficult one – as there is no shortcut to it. Establishing oneself as an authority requires tremendous investment in quality content creation and client outreach – and takes quite some time to pan out.
Good topic thanks a lot I read all