Selecting a Niche – Part II

differentiation, Marketing, Positioning, Product Management, Sales

In the first post on Selecting a Niche – I spoke about Selecting a niche in the market and finding a market in the niche for your product. In Product Management this is like the fundamental step for you to look at

While one of the reasons of selecting a niche is to be able to differentiate, the other reason is to avoid the big players who are already present.

Its not a good idea to be a better Honda or a better SONY or any other market leader. They can be a better themselves by themselves and they have the marketing and financial muscle to outlast any competition.

When selecting a niche you should be looking at a market which is big for you, but not big enough for the market leader to be bothered about that small market, that it puts its energy in competing with you. So a convenience store like Seven-Eleven has a niche where it charges the prices it wants and is profitable. It does not try to compete with the Walmarts of the world.

Given what I mentioned above – the size should be large for your capability (market in the niche) but should be small enough for the leader to ignore (niche in the market). Then you start differentiating. The kind of products and product packs that are available in a Seven-Eleven will not be found in a Costco or a Walmart.

And you will know you are being successful when people start comparing their offering with yours or as the late Dr Sean Stephenson used to say “Anti-Fans” start talking something bad about you and customers will call the category by your product/service name. Once that happens, you will polarise a certain section of the market to always keep coming back to you and your selling costs will come down and your profitability will go up.

At the end of the day the job of a person in product management is to ensure that she can create a category which she can own with her product

Till next time.

Carpe Diem!!!

Perception- III

differentiation, Marketing, Positioning, Product Management, Sales

These parts on marketing are short because I like to get a bite size idea across in the time while you wait in the line at Tim Hortons or Starbucks – max two minute read.

In the first post on this topic, I spoke about why perception about your product or service can make such a big difference in the premiums you command and the profitability you can make.

In the second post I wrote about the downside of taking a position in the market especially when there’s a major technology shift – from horse carriages to automotive.

One of the key agendas of marketing is to attract customers to you. But there’s an unsaid implication in that statement.

Marketing should help you attract the customers you want and repel those you don’t want.

Like the red egg above in the picture, people who don’t like to have red eggs will get repulsed by it and will not buy it. However the people who love red eggs will go to any length to get them.

You may sell a much smaller volume than the white eggs, but you could be making much larger volume. So many iconic brands like Harley Davidson, Apple, don’t have a large market share in terms of volume but they lead in terms of profitability.

Whatever perception you want to create however cannot be at the cost of the quality of the products or services. Good marketing is not a substitute for a poor quality product.

If you have an excellent quality product or service and then you choose a narrow market and create a perception of being different then you can take home a much higher profit.

Till next time.

Carpe Diem!!!

Differentiation

differentiation, Marketing, Sales

Bigbasket is a grocery and fresh fruit and vegetables delivery e-commerce company in India. I order stuff from them via their Mobile App

I was ordering the monthly stock of groceries, couple of days back on their app.

I ordered my standard brand of multi grain flour, biscuits etc.

My wife had asked me to also order mustard sauce. I don’t have a preferred brand of mustard sauce. So I searched. There were basically two types of mustard sauces- American Mustard and English Mustard. And every brand had these two.

To top it, I don’t know the difference between the two.

So I randomly decided to look at American Mustard sauce.

Now comes the interesting part….between the various brands that they had on their catalog, the only difference I could see was price…..maybe if I had tried to go deeper I would have found out some things. But at least I was not able to see upfront and I did not have the time to explore, so I kept scrolling down.

Suddenly I came across a brand which was clearly showing 96% fat free. Now please understand I don’t know if others are also equally fat free or not. But because I appreciate things which have less fat I ended up buying it. I didn’t think of price.

As a practioner of marketing I am always looking for seeing how companies who don’t have a brand, differentiate their products to make them stand out. Otherwise for most people if they don’t see the difference the only way people choose is on price.

Having a well recognized brand helps make you stand out. But if you’re starting new, the only way you can survive is by being able to differentiate your business.

On the other hand if you differentiate, then you will appeal to some people who will then not think of price when they buy your product or service. Slowly you then build your brand because of the differentiation.

Till next time.

Carpe Diem!!!

Relentless – Part II

Habits, Marketing, Sales

Since yesterday when I first wrote the blog post about being relentless this thought has been going on in my mind continuously all through the night that all marketing success at one point comes down to being relentless in your pursuit. You can read the post.

That does not mean there are no other attributes – like if you are running in the wrong direction then obviously you will reach the wrong place but assuming you have the right direction then if you have to reach your destination you need to be e consistently relentlessly going after your target destination to be able to reach there

After the post I looked around to see which other authors had sold more than a million books and try to identify what all they were doing to achieve those numbers. One author who comes to mind is Russell Brunson. He’s written 3 books and has this relentless effort to ensure he’s in front of the right influencers who read his books, interviewed him and their audiences bought his books.

If I look at sales, one of the greatest sales guys I have had the chance to read about was the late Chet Holmes. He had a methodology which he used to call the Dream 100. His idea was very simple. He would first identify the Top 100 (notional number) that he wanted to do business with.

Then he would relentlessly every alternate day send a bulky packet with information and next day give a call. In one case as per him , where he had listed 167 companies in his list of dream companies , he was able to get all of them as customers within about an year.

At the end of the day, the consistent focus of daily activities is what helps these companies execute.

Again as I said earlier this does not mean that you don’t need a good product or service. It does not mean that you don’t need to differentiate your offerings. It does not mean that you have a faulty strategy. These are table stakes.

If you have all the above and then you execute relentlessly that’s when you succeed. If you have all the above and do things in an episodic way then you will fail.

Till next time.

Carpe Diem!!!