Freelance Home-Based Small BusinessWhat Makes Your Business Stand Out From The Competition?

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What Makes Your Freelance / Home- Based / Small Business Stand Out From Your Competitors?

by Lesley Johnston

The type of business that you are in is by no means unique no matter how small your business niche is.

The way you present and run your business is. Why does one business thrive while another fails? It could be similar businesses in the same town, your town. What makes one stand out while the other one lurks in the shadows? What makes your business stand out from the rest?

Take a pen and paper and quickly write down some of the reasons that you think why you stand out from the competition and what makes your business unique. Once you have done this take a quick flick through your local yellow pages and go to the entries dealing with your type of business. What unique selling points are they advertising? Do they advertise the same selling points? How does your quick list of your businesses selling points compare? Have you picked up some ideas? If you have noticed that they all have a similar theme and are offering the same selling points then what makes them stand out? What would make you choose one over another? Ask a few other people what they think and see if there is a general consensus about what would cause people to buy from certain businesses.

If you are thinking of, or have started a home business on the internet then find out what your competitors are doing.

Using your keywords for your website, search for each one and find out which sites come out in the top ten, do this for all your keywords. Are these really the keywords that you are looking for? Find out what your competitors keywords are by right clicking on your mouse while on their site and click on “view source”. Have you picked up any more keywords that maybe of better suitability to your site? Can you drop some keywords that are no longer appropriate? Make sure that the keywords that you use are mentioned throughout your site and definitely on the front page as it will give you more points with the search engines if your keywords actually relate to your site! Do this exercise BEFORE you submit your site to any search engines.

Talk to your small business' customers and prospective customers.

I don’t just mean your friends and family who may wish to appear to say the right thing to encourage you. I mean people that you don’t know, that you meet in the street or a casual acquaintance that will give you their honest opinions on what you are doing wrong and also what they like about your business. Tell them what your business is all about and what they can expect from your business, it could be fast delivery, quick response to query, local business, personal service, cheap prices, please note that cheap prices does not always win the order. Find out what your customers want and then make that your USP (Unique Selling Point), that is what makes you stand out from your competitors.

The main difference between your small / freelance / home- based business & the competitors is YOU!

You could both have the same type of home, live in the same type of neighborhood, have the same qualifications and experience, the same family situation, the same business idea, the same computer even the same software to get started with but the thing that makes all the difference in whether your business will survive or not is YOU!

You have to have a vision of where your business is heading that is so strong that when things don’t go quite as planned you review your present position and then take the appropriate action so that your final destination is the same. While we dream about where we will end up, without action, albeit misplaced action, we will never get there. This is procrastination at its worst. Take the leap of faith in yourself and make you and your business stand out from the competition. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain, so what are you waiting for?

Go the extra distance, over deliver on your promises.

Customers will expect what you promise them but go the extra distance and over deliver then you may just of found a customer for life! You can over deliver by sending a small thank you note, a small gift, a discount voucher, a telephone call to ask how your business performed and if there was anything else you could do to help. Over delivering on your promises is a great way to stand out from the competition so long as you keep this up you can almost guarantee that word of mouth advertising from these satisfied customers will bring you in more customers and make you stand out from the competition!

What are you waiting for, what can you do to make your business stand out from your competition NOW!

Lesley Johnston may be contacted at http://www.thebusinessmum.com Lesley Johnston is a wahm who has been running her own home business for over 4 years. She is a firm believer in Action = Success which clearly comes across in her free ACTION newsletter to motivate other wahm's to their success.

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What Makes Your Freelance / Home- Based / Small Business Stand Out From Your Competitors?

The type of business that you are in is by no means unique no matter how small your business niche is.

If you are thinking of, or have started a home business on the internet then find out what your competitors are doing.

Talk to your small business' customers and prospective customers.

The main difference between your small / freelance / home- based business & the competitors is YOU!

Go the extra distance, over deliver on your promises.

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