4 Marketing Tips to Help Businesses Keep Ahead of Competitors

Keeping ahead of the competition is no small thing. It’s a war out there for small and medium-sized companies that compete in the same market segments as large multi-national companies with marketing budgets that dwarf their own.

To help you out, here are 4 marketing tips that businesses can use to get ahead.

1. Come Out with an App

When you’re trying to compete with your peers or the bigger competition, having a mobile app on Android and iOS makes you appear larger than you are. It can be daunting to hire a programmer to produce an app for the Android platform and another programmer for the iOS platform. However, there is a solution in the Yappi app builder.

The Yappi app builder lets your company publish their own app complete with push notifications, an attractive layout, and analytical data including the number of concurrent users and the total installed users. An app can be produced initially for free and there’s a subscription plan with premium features.

2. Don’t Be Afraid to Niche Down

While your company may have a product that will eventually appeal to the masses, when the advertisement message is spread too thin because it’s not targeted to one demographic group, then it won’t get noticed. For this reason, it’s best to niche down at the start and expand out to other demographic groups later.

Do some market research to discover which groups will find your product or service more appealing. Once the demographic group has been identified, look at where they hang out online and how best to capture their interest with your offering.

Identify the Influencers

For every social media group, there are established social influencers with a huge following. When they tweet, post a Facebook message or add a new photo on Instagram, their followers go to see it. Depending on what you wish to market, they’ll be an influencer who will be interested to check out your product or service to determine if it’s a good fit for their audience.

Spend time in communication with one or more influencers. Engage them on their level and seek constructive criticism about your product or service to see if they have suggestions that might improve it ahead of going to market. Come back with a better version and see if they’d be willing to give it a mention to their audience. The fact that they can talk about how they helped improve the product could put it over the top in their mind, and lead to a far wider audience.

4. Come Up with Wacky Marketing Ideas

It may seem like a strange suggestion, but there’s a reason why Sir Richard Branson chose to go on so many hair-raising trips on hot air balloons. While he clearly enjoyed both the adventure and the notoriety, the real reason for getting involved was to generate millions of pounds of publicity for his Virgin group of companies. This type of front-page publicity is something you just cannot buy.

While daring adventures may not be the business owner’s idea of a good time, marketing ideas must be fun and different enough to catch potential customers’ attention. In the same way that many TV ads have been memorable along with the product they were promoting, online promotions can play up a quirky brand image to stand out from the crowded field of competitors vying for the same customer.

When marketing against larger competitors with deeper pockets, it’s necessary to get as creative as possible to do more with less. Whether through funny ads, co-promotional opportunities, or finely targeting your initial demographic for the greatest impact, make sure whatever you do knocks them for six.