When considering starting a small business, it is always good to identify your product or service and how you plan to market it and brand your business. Additionally, it is in your best interests to learn some of the strategies for success from the absolute best. Industry leaders are industry leaders for a reason, and their success and command of the market is something that small businesses should be studying and learning from. Ultimately, in order to compete and come out ahead, you need to find that competitive edge that leads to success in your market. This isn’t always easy, but when you do, it means the difference between coming out on top or sinking below the rest of the competition.
The Three D’s used by Industry Leaders and What Small Businesses Can Learn
1. Diversify
Just like with financial investments, sometimes the best approach to your business is to diversify. It is often true that your competitive edge isn’t necessarily in the products that you are selling, but is instead in the type of services that you offer with it. It’s about building a unique brand experience. You need to ask yourself what you can offer that none of the other competitors are offering. Can you offer a certain type of access to the product that no one else does, or offer a different kind of platform with which to engage this product? A good example of a unique brand experience is with luxury watch online retailer, Chrono24. The Chrono24 portal is not just another eCommerce site, but is instead a place where you can go to buy, sell, and trade; and it houses live auctions for products as well. The product is the same as what you can find from an in-store retailer or luxury classic and vintage watch dealer; however, it offers convenience, greater access, and an interactive platform or community that is useful for more than simply making a purchase. This versatility of service is one of the reasons that they have become a leader in their industry.
2. Define
Of course offering a unique brand experience along with a good product is important, you also need to know who you are selling to in order to brand yourself correctly; so you need to define your target market. A major pitfall for small business is casting a wide net so that their target audience becomes anyone who might buy their product or service. Unfortunately, this is a really hit-or-miss marketing approach. It is best to narrow down your target market to a distinct group that can benefit from this product or service. Although this narrowing of scope may feel like you may lose out on potential sales, in the end you will be able to craft better targeted marketing campaigns and see higher conversion and sales from those efforts. For example, Apple, when it originally saw its resurgence, did something very simple but very smart – it simplified! It didn’t target large organizations and attempt to dominate office spaces or sell computers to the business-professional computer user. Instead, Apple focused on being incredibly user-friendly and targeted everyday people approaching this technology. It identified a market that craved an easier, more common-sense experience. Later on this developed into more design-centered and multimedia approaches while ease and practicality remained in focus. And as you are well aware, Apple boomed and became the most valuable brand in the world.
3. Develop
These days, hardly anyone buys anything without looking up reviews and researching the product or company. This is why, even if you are a small company, you need to develop a good online presence and build a good online community. Just as you would thoroughly check out a business that you wanted to enter into a partnership with first, your consumers will want to check out your company and the product or services you offer. They will look up what others have said about your company and services and they will want to be able to engage with your company in an informative way throughout their experience. First, these people need to be able to find you, so you need to build an online presence by being active on community platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pintrest, etc., and have a well-designed website that you direct this traffic to. Then, you need to manage this online community and your online reputation by engaging with the people who are attempting to find and engage with you. Of course, perhaps the best industry leader that exemplifies this is also the main tool used in online search and is the second most valuable brand in the world: Google. The fact that the search engine is also a verb now in the modern vernacular speaks for itself. Google literally wrote the book connecting people with content or information, with each other, and on getting found online. It also continues to develop understandings of communities and context circles, along with developing and perfecting its algorithms.
