Competing Against Everyone for Anyone is Expensive

Every busi­ness wants to win new cus­tomers. Com­pe­ti­tion for those new cus­tomers is some­thing that every busi­ness owner deals with on a daily basis.   When busi­ness own­ers describe their ideal cus­tomer as “any­one” what they expose them­selves to is com­pe­ti­tion from “every­one” and com­pet­ing with “every­one” is expen­sive.  Imag­ine a busi­ness owner that claims his or her ideal cus­tomer is “any­one that has a car”.  Now think of all of the other busi­nesses that have an offer for a car owner. There must be thou­sands.    How can a busi­ness owner build a busi­ness and mar­ket­ing plan to com­pete against the masses?  Unless they have unlim­ited time and money, they can’t.  Most busi­ness own­ers resort to try­ing this mar­ket­ing tac­tic, then that one. Jump­ing from the lat­est fad and what­ever is the “mar­ket­ing tac­tic of the week” with no real suc­cess.  It is costly in terms of time and money.

There is a bet­ter way.

Instead of spend­ing and wast­ing your mar­ket­ing dol­lars try­ing to com­pete against every­one with tac­tics that con­stantly fail, you could take the strate­gic approach.

Invest in deter­min­ing your tar­get mar­ket, ideal cus­tomer, and ways for your busi­ness to dif­fer­en­ti­ate and dom­i­nate within a very nar­row market.

By tak­ing a more strate­gic approach you elim­i­nate the bat­tle of com­pet­ing with every­one and can deter­mine how to grow you busi­ness in a very repeat­able way.  Your mar­ket­ing bud­get can be invested in very spe­cific meth­ods that allow your busi­ness to nar­row its focus, deter­mine where your dol­lars should be spent and how to mea­sure the effec­tive­ness of you mar­ket­ing spend. Instead of look­ing for  “any­one who has a car” you’ll be build­ing a busi­ness for “sales pro­fes­sion­als with cars more than 10 years old, that spend at least 90 min­utes in their car every­day, and want to decrease their fuel cost with­out hassle”.

Strate­gi­cally nar­row­ing your mar­ket­ing efforts to prospects that value your prod­uct or solu­tion will reduce your com­pe­ti­tion and your cost.

For infor­ma­tion on how to think strate­gi­cally about mar­ket­ing download this eBook: 7 Steps to Small Busi­ness Mar­ket­ing Suc­cess.