Market Dominating Position – Part 1
Do you know what is a Market Dominating Position?
Does your business have a Market Dominating Position?
The majority of small businesses are established in response to market demand for a product or service. Many build their businesses by serving that demand and enjoy growing profits without putting much effort into long-term planning or marketing.
However, what happens when that demand slows or stops?
What happens when the competition sets up shop with a “new and improved” version of your product down the road?
How do you keep your offering fresh while growing and maintaining your client base?
The answer, Innovate your business and offer extraordinary value by creating a “market dominating position.”
Consider this. Every choice you make when buying a product or a service represents a point of differentiation between one company and their competitors. These differences, whether subtle or distinct, determine which customers will buy what they sell.
Consider the well documented case of Domino’s Pizza.
Why did Domino’s become a billion dollar behemoth in an overcrowded market in just a few years?
Did Domino’s make the best pizza? Not even close!
Did they offer comfortable in-house dining? No way!
Did they offer the largest selection on their menu? They offered the exact same pizza as ALL of their competitors!
They dominated by adopting and implementing one major strategy.
They created a market dominating position, which was fast hot pizza, targeted specifically for hungry college kids.
So now ask yourself what, if anything, makes your business different from your competitors as perceived by your targeted prospects and customers?
For the vast majority of businesses that answer is price.
So then consider today’s top selling companies.
Nike offers a wide range of shoes, apparel and equipment products, all of which are currently among the best sellers globally.
As an example, the top selling Air Jordan 3 is currently selling for $150 and up.
And yet, Target sells an excellent imitation for around $40, but Nike outsells them by more than ten to one.
Have you bought a cup of coffee lately at Starbucks?
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According to their latest data, their typical customer spends between $3.50 to $4.00 on every visit.
That’s around four times higher than any of their competition.
Obviously, low price isn’t the driving force here.
So what is?
The answer, these top selling companies have staked out a specific and targeted market dominating position.
For Nike, their position revolves around being the best athlete, being hip and in style along with the perception of quality.
For Starbucks, it’s delicious hand-crafted beverages which they claim is the secret to making life better.
When you create your own market dominating position, you will consistently get businesses and individuals to choose your business over your competitors.
But what exactly is a “market dominating position?”
It’s simply any value-added customer perceived benefit, or a combination of benefits, that differentiates you from your competitors; and does so in a strong enough manner that it makes your business the logical choice in the minds of your prospects and customers.
As an example, a dry cleaner that offers pick-up and delivery would be the only logical choice for any prospect or customer that values convenience.
This simple distinction represents a market dominating position.
The key is to create added value in everything you do.
Prospects and customers DON’T buy based on price.
They buy based on the value they receive for the price they pay.
Creating added value is a marketing or customer relations strategy that can take the form of a product or service that’s added to your original offering for free or as part of a discounted package.
Like all other elements in your marketing toolkit, it’s designed to attract new customers and retain existing ones.
Another simple example of added value would be a gift shop owner that offered complimentary gift wrapping with every purchase.
If you don’t revisit the value you offer, then over time your customers will be drawn to your competitor who consistently innovate their business so they offer exceptional value that you don’t.
Ultimately, your customers will demand additional value to remain loyal – and they’re the keystones for your business growth.
Everyone can add value to their business.
And adding value doesn’t have to blow your marketing budget or take up hours of your time.
There are many ways to enhance your business in the eyes of your clients.
The key to adding value is determining what your customers and target market perceive as valuable.
You must understand their needs, wants, troubles and inconveniences in order to entice them with solutions through added value products or services.
Adding value will also add to your profits, but if you don’t focus on genuinely helping your clients you’ll have a difficult time attracting them.
Added value works for both product and service-based businesses.
If you offer a service like hair styling, try treating your customers by offering them a latte while they wait, or complimentary shampoo samples or a free conditioning treatment with every sixth visit.
If you sell a product, consider offering convenience services like free shipping or delivery to make the customer’s experience a seamless one.
The customer will feel appreciated and their needs will have been taken care of.
I hope this read opened your eyes to opportunities that are missing in your business.
In the next blog I will help you understand how to create your business’ marketing dominating position.
If you need help identifying your market dominating position, try my FREE test drive to gain access to our resources and tools.
Check it out at www.BestEntrepreneurSolutions.com/guidedtour
To Your Success,
Nancy Baki at Best Entrepreneur Solutions
How to Reactivate Past Clients – Part 2 – 8 Steps to Designing a Reactivation Campaign
As promised here are the 8 Steps to Designing a Reactivation Campaign
One of my clients just launched a fairly large reactivation campaign. While there are many ways to run a reactivation campaign, the following steps will set you on a straight path should you decide to launch one.
First, understand that a reactivation campaign is when you create a strategy around those sleepy subscribers. You want them to get back to opening your emails and engaging with them. This can help improve sales, click-throughs, website traffic, and more.
1- Who is your target?
Are these people who stopped buying from you six months ago? Three months? Twelve months? If you run a subscription service, are they people who canceled one month ago? Two weeks ago? Two years ago? Decide first who you want to try and reactivate. If someone bought from you four years ago and you’re just now getting around to sending them an e-mail, it’s probably too late. It’s OK to run a few different variations of the campaign if you want to target several different groups from above.
2- What’s your goal?
I’ll take a wild stab and say your goal is to either have these consumers buy from you again, re-subscribe to your services, or otherwise reengage with your company. But, are there more specific goals than that? Maybe you want to introduce a new product line, introduce a new account manager, or upsell them on something they already own (or a service they already use)?
3- Why did these consumers leave?
Unlike a normal marketing campaign, you need to understand why your consumers left. Did they not like your products? Were you too expensive? Did you not have enough content in their particular field to keep them interested? Knowing the reasons they probably left will enable you to craft a message that addresses those issues specifically.
4- What segmentation or persona data do you have?
If you can segment these consumers either by persona or by purchase habits, you can make your reactivation campaign that much more effective. The rules here are the same as for any direct marketing: don’t just send a mass “We want you back” e-mail. Instead, use whatever knowledge you have of the consumer in order to create a more relevant message.
5- Split test offers.
It’s fine to offer a reactivation discount code to these consumers. They were effectively “dead” anyhow, so you aren’t really losing a full-price purchase by offering them a discount. However, showing consumers that you understand them and have new offerings that meet their needs might just be enough. So, do a split test and create discounts for some percentage of the group, but not all of them. See how they do when compared to the group with no offer.
6- Focus on your content.
Instead of just saying, “We want you back, here’s 15% off,” make a real Show your consumers you understand them. If they used to buy video games, talk about all the new things that have happened in video games since they last checked your site out. If you run a content subscription-based site (like E-Learning), highlight the new content you’ve added to your site since they were last members. Put the relevant content first. Consumers can get a discount anywhere if they try. It’s your content and products (if they’re relevant) that will be more interesting to them.
7- Make it easy for them to come back.
If it has been a while, there’s a good chance your consumers don’t remember their usernames or passwords. Either send them this information (or at least their username) in the e-mail, or make it really easy for them to find it. If their account has “expired,” make it easy for them to renew without reentering all their information again. If you offered a discount code, make it very clear where they enter it.
8- Reach out via different channels.
Are these consumers on Twitter (and do they follow you)? If so, send them a direct message, not an e-mail. E-mail marketing is great, but try other channels if you have access to them.
Finally, realize the difference between a reactivation campaign and a regular campaign. While the above steps could be the recipe for any old marketing campaign, there is one important difference. Reactivation marketing needs to understand how long people have been gone, why they possibly left, what is different in your offerings now that would make them come back, and what (if any) incentive they might need to come back.
If you can’t answer, “What is different in our offerings that would make them come back,” then skip the reactivation campaign and focus on answering that question first!
You are more than welcome to take a FREE tour to see how I can help you grow your business:
Check it out at: www.BestEntrepreneurSolutions.com/guidedtour
To Your Success,
Nancy Baki at Best Entrepreneur Solutions
Tax Benefits for Your Business
Mind Your Own Business!
The concept of minding your own business means that while you are grinding away at your day job you need to be investing in your future and minding your own business. Pretty soon you’ll be able to walk away from that day job and mind your own business full time.
The best way to do this is through the acquisition of real estate.
Let’s take a quick look at where you are losing all your money-taxes. Taxes have been around since 1913 in the U.S. and 1917 in Canada (even earlier in England). While the original intention was to only tax the wealthiest of the population, obviously that’s trickled down to the masses, including those in poverty.
Now, keep in mind the more money you make the more taxes you pay. The wealthy know a way of getting around this-form a corporation. Corporations offer tax benefits and protect you from lawsuits. To learn more about this talk with one of our business coaches or your attorney.
We’ve all heard the golden rule of: Pay Yourself First.
But, many of us don’t do it. Until you learn and put this rule into effect, you won’t have any chance of getting out of the rat race. What this rule does is force you to come up with more income to pay your expenses.
There are some key areas of finance you should learn about, taking classes is one of the best ways to do this. Here are the basics you should learn:
Accounting
It pays to know how to read financial statements. When acquiring businesses or assets you need to quickly see the financial standing of the company you are acquiring.
Many grown adults do not know how to balance a balance sheet. In the long term, this knowledge will pay off for you and your business.
Investment Strategy
This skill will sharpen with experience. Talk to investors and observe how they play the game.
Market Behavior
Know the laws of Supply and Demand. No business owner can do without understanding these basic principles of the market. Bill Gates saw what people needed. Open your eyes to opportunities. Look at what sells and who buys.
Law
Do everything you can to grow your business within legal boundaries. Know your corporate, state, and accounting laws.
Once you know these areas of finances you can make them work for you. The rich practically invent money. You have to know where to find a great deal. Let’s continue with real estate. Look for houses in trouble or find the court in your area that handles foreclosed, police impound or other real estate situations. You can either renovate and sell or rent for residual income.
So, essentially there are two main types of investors:
- Those who buy pre-packaged investments
- Those who create their own investments
You know which are the most successful. In order to be one of those people you need to know what to look for and how to respond.
You must:
- Find a good deal other people have missed.
- Raise the capital needed for the transaction.
- Put together a svelte team to execute the plan.
There is risk involved in every acquisition. The goal is not to avoid the risk, but to respond to the risk with confidence and a steady hand.
If you need help identifying potential money-makers, where to get the capital you need and how to put together a smart team, try our FREE test drive to gain access to our resources and tools.
Check it out at www.BestEntrepreneurSolutions.com/guidedtour
To Your Success,
Nancy Baki at Best Entrepreneur Solutions
Steps to Create a Word of Mouth Campaign
Prepare for Lift Off!
Last time I gave you a laundry list of tips and tricks you can use to make your word of mouth program work for you. Hopefully you’ve taken a look and decided which ones are the best fit for your company, products, services and target customers, so you can put them to work in your word of mouth campaign.
We are going to wrap up this series on word of mouth where we give you the specific steps to create a word of mouth campaign.
Now, let’s take a look at those steps:
- Seed the market. Find some way to get the product into the hands of key influencers.
- Provide a channel for the influencers to talk and get all fired up about your product.
- Offers lots of testimonials and other resources.
- Form an ongoing group that meets once a year in a resort and once a month by teleconference.
- Create fun events to bring users together and invite non-users. Saturn, Harley-Davidson, and Lexus have all been successful with this approach.
- Develop cassettes, videotapes, and clips on your Web site featuring enthusiastic customers talking with other enthusiastic customers.
- Create custom CDs for each potential customer.
- Hold seminars and workshops.
- Create a club with membership benefits.
- Pass out flyers.
- Tell friends.
- Offer special incentives and discounts for friends who tell their friends.
- Put the Internet to work.
- Do at least one outrageous thing to generate word of mouth.
- Empower employees to go the extra mile.
- Encourage networking and brainstorm ideas.
- Run special sales.
- Encourage referrals with the use of a strong referral program.
- Use a script to tell people exactly what to say in their word of mouth communication.
These are all amazing ways you can get the word out about your products and services and start a word of mouth campaign that takes on a life of its own. Before you can release your word of mouth campaign out into the world, you need to go through the checklist to make sure you’ve covered all the essentials.
Here’s your word of mouth campaign checklist:
- Are all of your communications sending the same simple message? If it can’t survive word of mouth, it’s not a compelling story.
- Is your product positioned as part of a category? Ex.”A dandruff shampoo that doesn’t dry your hair.”
- Are your examples outrageous enough to be shared?
- Do you enhance your materials with success stories from real people?
- Are you using experts effectively and in an objective manner?
- Have you created mechanisms so people can follow up on the word of mouth they hear, as well as simple ways of inquiring or ordering?
- Have you made the decision process easy for customers?
- Have you created events and mechanisms so that once a year your prospects hear about your product, and it is easier to try or buy?
These are all essential elements to take keep in mind when taking a second or even third check over your word of mouth campaigns. I hope you’ve found this series on word of mouth to be a great resource and are getting ready to put it into action for your own products and services.
Remember, if you need help with anything in this series, try our FREE test drive to gain access to the best resources, tools and business coaches you can find.
Check it out at www.BestEntrepreneurSolutions.com/guidedtour
To Your Success,
Nancy Baki at Best Entrepreneur Solutions
Learn The Secrets of Word of Mouth Marketing
Put it to Work!
In the last post we talked about how to conduct word of mouth research and then put that research to work. Today we’re going to give you some great tried and true ways to use word of mouth when building and executing your campaign.
We’ve done it in a list form, so you can go through and highlight the ones you want to put into action. These are offered by George Silverman which you can find in his amazing book The Secrets of Word of Mouth Marketing.
Here they are:
- Give them something worth talking about
- Cater to your initial customers shamelessly
- Give them incentives to engage in word of mouth
- Ask them to tell their friends
- The customer is always right
- Always tell the truth
- Surprise the customers by giving them a little more than they expected
- Give them a reason to buy, make them come back and refuse service from anyone else other than you
- Make eye contact, and smile, even through the telephone
- Find ways to make doing business with you a little better: a warmer greeting, a cleaner floor, nicer lighting, a better shopping bag, extra matches, faster service, free delivery, lower prices, more selection.
- Never be annoyed when a customer asks you to change a large bill even if he doesn’t buy anything.
- The customer is your reason for being. Never take her for granted. If you do, she will never come back, and will go straight to your competition.
- Always dust off items, but never let the customer see you doing it.
- Never embarrass a customer, especially by making him feel ignorant.
- Never answer a question coming from a desire to show how smart you are. Answer with a desire to help the customer make the best decision.
- Never shout across the store, “How much are these condoms?” or anything about the personal items a customer is buying.
- When you don’t know, say so. Do whatever you can to find out the answer.
- Every customer is special. Try to remember their names.
- Don’t allow known shoplifters into the store.
- Don’t ever let two sales staff talk when a customer is waiting. The worst thing you can do is count your cash while a customer is waiting.
- If you can suggest something better, they will be grateful. Always respect their choice.
- Never pressure anyone into buying anything.
- Never knowingly give bad advice. Just help people come to the right decision.
- Personally visit the store of the competition or assign people to visit and report back to you.
- Hire a shopping service to prepare periodic reports on how your people are treating your customers.
- If you hear of a store where the management is insulting the customers, buy it, then put up the sign “Under New Management” outside. Then sell it later based on the increased sales.
- One expert (in the drugstore’s case, a nurse or physician) who is convinced you are better brings hundreds of customers and their friends through word of mouth.
- Always look for ways to make a stranger a customer.
- People will walk several blocks to save a dollar, or see a smile, or be treated right.
- Always run a sale promotion or an offbeat event. Make them come back to see what you are cooking up next.
- Use the best sign-maker you can find and pay him more than anybody else.
- If someone is mad at you, they will tell everyone who will listen for as long as they are angry, maybe even longer. So correct any dissatisfaction, and ask customers to send their friends.
- Treat your employees and salespeople who sell to you the same way you treat your customers.
- Have a zero error system. There may be terrible consequences for example, if a mistake is made filling a prescription. Have people check each other’s work for safety.
- Occasionally make intentional mistakes to see if people are checking.
- Always measure your performance.
- Always ask a customer to “come back soon”
- If customers say they are moving away, offer to send them their favorite items by mail.
- Tell jokes.
I know this is a lot of information to digest, so I we’re going to wrap up this lesson and leave you with the homework of going through and taking a look at the tips and tricks you like best. Also, look for tips that fit your company, products, services and target customers for the most effectiveness.
If you need help with this process, try our FREE test drive and get all the help you need from myself, Nancy Baki, a Business Growth Strategist.
Check it out at www.BestEntrepreneurSolutions.com/guidedtour
To Your Success,
Nancy Baki at Best Entrepreneur Solutions
www.BestEntrepreneurSolutions.com