Nett Knowledge Blog

I'm doing a post today that is relevant to other areas of the world also, but my focus as a local Novocastrian in Newcastle is the Newcastle Web Design niche. There are many web designers in Newcastle who have come onto the scene of late, and with online marketing only getting more competitive amongst web and graphic designers there will be many more of these businesses opening up.

With so many web designers and builders in the marketplace today, what can they do to differentiate themselves from the hoardes of "me too" web business copycats that are emerging and doing "inferior" work compared to the real mccoys?

Well the first thing that I see they need to do is "protect" themselves from the competition by insulating their niche so there's no-one else in that arena with them.

What do I mean by "Insulating Their Niche"?

Well there's 11 charateristics of any companies core concept that it needs to stay competitive and also excel to higher levels of business.

A company  should firstly present something new to their prospective buyers, that will cut throught the clutter and be something that a local industry newsletter would find worthy of publishing. Ideally this "new" idea, angle or perspective will STOP prospects in their tracks and have them wondering what you just said and how they can get MORE of what your doing, above and beyond every other competitor out there.

Further more, a local newcastle web design companies message and angle should be unique, to make it as powerful as possible. Don't get confused with the difference between new and unique either, but becuase something is unique doesn't make it new. This needs to be distinguished and weaved into the newcastle web designers message also.

The message should also feel "Original" like a top secret that no-one else has shared with local prospects in the area before. This will give prospects the satisfaction of finding something secret or hidden that only they know about and their competition won't know, it's sort of like a form of social currency and like knowing a great joke.

This moves us into the "prospect focussed" area, if the message is original, then it also has to be highly prospect focussed. So your really giving attention to them reaching their goals, meeting their needs and improving their lives. Of course to do this properly you need to be well aware of the prospects core buying emotions, so paying attention to and studying their belief systems, feelings and desires is of utmost importance if you're going to reach them fully.

Once the core beliefs and buying emotions are established, then a good bold breakthrough message needs to be presented. It has to be BOLD and really get their attention, because it's competing against all the other ideas and unique angles of other competitors. You'll know when your message is right, becuase it will shake your prospects by the collar (gently of course) and get them to do a double take on what they've just read, plus, they'll want to know more NOW and not give you a "send me more information" or "tell me later" attitude.

The core concept that you come up with needs to have a "built-in" benefit as part of it. It doesn't necessarily need to be direct or implied, it just needs to have one. This is important becuase a prospect needs to knwo they'll have some form of benefint from it once they find out more.

Now once a prospect gets to the core stage of finding out more, there needs to be sufficient evidence and proof to make the core concept much more powerful, no it's not necessary, but it certainly helps. It's best to use an air-tight logical argument when launching a new core concept in your design business to prove the new concepts relevance to a prospect.

The core concept needs to be easily explained and understood by prospects, a couple of sentences max. It should also abdicate from previous failures a prospect might have had. So it will help prospects understand why they might have failed at whatever you help them achieve in the past and why it wasn't their fault. This will give your prospects a new found hope in tying themselves in with a company that really understands them.

A lot of Newcastle graphic designers seem to be getting more expensive and really competing on price, but for a core concept to work it needs to be better, faster, cheaper or more certain, so pricing isn't the overall issue here, keep that in mind. The more of each area you can include in your core concept the more competitive you will become.

Finally, a core concept needs to be deeply ingrained into your unique selling proposition and what makes a web / graphic design service valuable to clients in Newcastle. If it's not focussed around delivering your prospects great value, then it's going to be irrelevent to them. Plus, if it doesn't reinforce the uniqueness of your service and working with you, your procpects might buy from you then again they might not, this ISN'T the outcome you want, good newcastle web development teams have a process of certainty why prospects buy from them, so you sit them down in front of a prospect and a very good percentage by "off of them"!

This is what being different and improving newcastle web designers can implement right now and beat the competition hands down.