How to Dislodge A Market Leader
Few companies are fortunate enough to create an entirely new high-tech market, and even less so dominate that market. Many join at the right time once costs have dropped and the market is sufficiently inflated. So why do so many companies lose their way to becoming a market leader?
The potential answers to this are almost endless, wrong skill sets in the business, shortfall in capital, fallouts between founders, etc – These all play their part but I want to assume that everything internally is sound, good staff and resources. Why then do companies not hit the heights they once thought attainable?
The transition period from early adopters of the technology to the early majority can really test a companies dynamism. Their are so many pitfalls to contend with but the most prevalent is the change in customer type that too few fail to master.
Things to consider:
- Early adopters are expecting to get a jump on their competitors and expect a discontinuity between their old processes and the new.
- Early majority however, expect evolution, not revolution. They expect the tech to enhance, not disrupt their current processes.
Are you sending the right message to prospects? Have you looked at what technology they are using and segmented them appropriately?
New markets, whether vertical or horizontal can have totally different outlooks. If you are looking to diversify into an unknown market and are trying the same approach as you would with your established market, then failure will undoubtedly become your unfortunate ally.
Dislodging market leaders is an amiable goal and that of many five year marketing plans, but they have a much larger budget, more established product and more importantly a brand. Customers will forgive a brand for minor and sometimes major mistakes – for us mere mortals, this is a luxury we can’t afford. Depending on the lifecycle stage of the market, this might not even be a possibility.
What makes you stand out? A great product, great salespeople, and/or great support? You might have features that save the customer time, it might have a better user interface or it might be more cost effective and if you’re lucky it will have all of these.
The differentiator though is how you market yourself. Pick any industry and go to the websites of the top five companies. Some will portray themselves as ‘trusted’, ‘hip’, ‘technological’, ‘customer oriented’, etc. You need to find what works for you and then own it. Do it better than anyone else, be inventive, be unusual and get noticed. You don’t have to spend like a market leader, but you do have to be as creative as one. You’ll get noticed by your customers and prospect base, and it will make all the difference.
Technology has come a long way in the last few years to help make digital marketing in particular much easier and more affordable, so use tools like Visitor Tracking to capture your website visitors and then Marketing Automation to nurture leads into customers. These used to be tools that only market leaders could afford, but now the playing field has levelled out and small to mid-sized companies can match the digital marketing efforts of companies with budgets they can only dream of. We welcome the opportunity to show you how you can be a marketing genius and own the marketing lifecycle – without perforating your bank account.
Click here to request a demonstration of our visitor tracking or marketing automation solutions.
