Owning Your Market
Place
I was reading
an interesting business blog, which I failed to bookmark, the other
day and the author asked the question: 'Do you own your marketplace?'
When people need a service is your business the first to spring to mind.
That got
us both thinking and the first thought that popped up was: 'Can a small
business own any market place?' From there we let our thoughts wander
over to the various market places that we work in.
In one
of those market places we are virtually unknown and yet we have now
reached the point where we are almost certainly the biggest and busiest
provider. In some ways we are unknown, it is not our business name that
springs to mind when people think about needing the services that we
provide. Yet by another perhaps more important criteria we do own the
market place.
But what
about your business, do you own your market place? For many small businesses
that market place is geographically small. A plumber can only service
a limited geographical area. A restaurant perhaps has an even smaller
geographical area.
On the
other hand a copywriter, a graphic designer or a programmer can look
to the world as their market place. So how does a small business go
about owning its market place?
Obviously,
the example comes from those who do and advertising and branding have
a great deal to do with achieving that goal. But can a small business
afford the costs of advertising and branding?
Even if
your market place is restricted there can be a considerable cost in
trying to achieve market ownership. Advertising is expensive but what
you might think of as advertising is not the only way to achieve your
goal.
Certainly
strategically placed advertisements in local papers, the sides of buses
and anywhere else that your potential clients can get the message is
important but there are other less costly ways of achieving your goal
too.
Having
a reputation for providing excellent customer service is an extremely
important way of getting your business out there. Treat every job as
the most important job you have ever had and before long word of mouth
advertising will boost you to the top of the tree in your local area.
That is
how we have reached the point with one of our businesses. In an area
that is renown for poor quality workmanship and a total inability to
stick to deadlines we get it right first time every time and we deliver
on time. Word of mouth advertising brings us so much work that there
just aren't enough hours in the day to do it all and people are even
prepared to pay above the market rate for our services.
For those
whose market is potentially worldwide - the graphic designers, copywriters,
programmers etc. - it's much harder to own the market place. So think
about taking your business to the world but only focusing on part of
the world.
Perhaps
that sounds rather confusing but again, let me use our business as an
example. There are a huge number of businesses worldwide who use the
services of copywriters but we are just a very small part of a thundering
herd of copywriters and we have no hope of ever competing with the big
names in the industry.
Whether
we're talented enough or not doesn't really enter into the equation.
The fact is that the competition is just too great for a mom and pop
business like ours. So we take our business to the world but we focus
on a small part of that world. The businesses we target are the small
online e-commerce people who can't afford the rates charged by the big
end of town but still need quality work.
By limiting
our focus we are still moving in the right direction to own the market
place and we are achieving it without spending huge sums on advertising.
So what
are you doing to dominate your marketplace?
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