How Do You Set Yourself Apart?

[Geddies_Toys]

Since everyone is so helpful and so successful here I thought I would pose this question.

I know all of us have our competition, how do you set yourself apart? What is your theory/practice to intice customers to shop at your store?

Do you check in on your competitor's to see how they are improving their game? Subscribe to their newsletters so you can have a feel for how they market?

Does your competition offer free shipping and you don't, how do you sway customers to purchase from you?

I always add in extra freebies with every order, respond to emails asap (usually within 10 mins) we offer a great newsletter and with our new e-commerce site I'll have a branded blog to go along with it. We also offer exact shipping and our customers have really appreciated this. We don't have inflated shipping charges

Any other ideas or suggestions are welcome!

Tommy Geddie

[radiogirl]

Are you strictly online or do you have a storefront too?

I just ask because one of my clients is a toy store just getting started online, at this point she's not looking at selling online, just and using the site & email to create in-store traffic.

Absolutely, you should be on your competitors lists...just keep in mind that what they are doing might not neccesarily be working. It really depends on how marketing oriented they are and how skilful they are in testing...many businesses do things just because they've heard it works and aren't necessarily testing and improving.

[Karri]

Have you considered adding a customer review feature to your online store (assuming you have an ecommerce site)? As a parent myself who shops online, I appreciate customer reviews but it would be especially refreshing to see something like this on a toy website. The trick of course is to get your customers to go back to the site post-purchase and write their review ... so you will need to create a follow up program to incent this (thru your ezine or whatever).

Cheers,
Karri

[Geddies_Toys]

Great Ideas!

We just started our E-Commerce site and our Design team is finishing up all of the technical stuff this week and then it will go live.

Right now we called it Geddie's toys but all we are currently offering is the complete line of Breyer Model Horses. In the near future we will be expanding into other lines as well but we wanted to start the whole branding thing now and not change up our image and business name in another year or so

Tommy G

[janicepink]

Originally Posted by Geddies_Toys

Great Ideas!

We just started our E-Commerce site and our Design team is finishing up all of the technical stuff this week and then it will go live.

Right now we called it Geddie's toys but all we are currently offering is the complete line of Breyer Model Horses. In the near future we will be expanding into other lines as well but we wanted to start the whole branding thing now and not change up our image and business name in another year or so

Tommy G

Exactly Tommy. It's better to start gaining distinction and recognition before even starting to change your image and business name. This is definitely the smartest thing to do in your case. Good luck!