Jumping into the marketplace isn’t the simplest of decisions for any business. A business needs to analyse a number of factors, and as you’d learn in management training, every aspect is crucial in determining the strategy to be adopted for acquiring market share. Decisions such as when, where, and at what level of expense, all play a significant role in the possible success or failure of any business.
The most important point to remember when taking a shot at a larger piece of the market share, is that you find a way to keep yourself in the media – so that everyone sees you daily, customers and competitors alike. You should take a hard line with your strategy, which can easily be gauged by the amount of time, money and the overall effort invested into your advertising, sales promotion, publicity and public relations, introductory offers and discounts, etc. The businesses which are able to differentiate themselves from their competitors are the real champions of their industry, and they are, without doubt, the market leaders. They receive focused customer attention and special privileges over everyone else in their market.
These next activities can be undertaken by a business to increase its presence throughout the marketplace:
- Differentiated Products and Services – The products or services offered by a business should be differentiated from those offered by others. It might be in the area of technology, design, packaging, the appearance or just anything else you can think of, but the product or service needs to have a distinct image which is easily recognisable by the customers.
- Customer Focused Advertising – Advertising is the fundamental method for reaching out to potential customers everywhere. Television, radio, internet, mobile phones and print media are the common advertising tools used in today’s world. This advertising should be customer and market targeted. The scope of this advertising and how many individuals it targets usually depends completely upon the amount of money which is allocated.
- Customer Relationship – Customers are the most important aspect of any business, and the aim of all businesses is to reach out to these customers in the most effective manner – as efficiently as possible. The principals of business coaching state that the essence of marketing is to build long term relationships with as many customers as can be reached, and with better pre-sale and after sales service, a business can provide quality support to the activities of every customer, thereby ensuring long term relationships and repeat business.
- Introductory Offers and Schemes – It’s very important at the time of entering a market that a business should use introductory offers, rebates, discounts and schemes to stimulate customers toward purchasing products and services.
- Extensive Warranties and Guarantees – Almost every customer will prefer a product that carries some kind of warranty or guarantee. If new products are associated with some form of extensive warranty or guarantee, most customers will feel that the company is responsible for their product, and therefore a “smart buy”.
Alan Gillies is the Managing Director of the L2L Group, specialising in supplying Executive Coaching, Training and Consultancy Services to Businesses around the World. Want to find out more about these comprehensive business building success strategies? Get Alan’s phenomenal FREE Business Pack right now!
