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When we think of market we think of a place where people buy products or services. A common mistake is to fail to dig deeper. Markets consist of more than products and buyers. Let’s take a different look at this.
In successful business and selling, the most important item in a market is people. Without people you don’t have a market. The misnomer here is that a market isn’t about just making lots of money. Although it does involve having the ability to makes tons of money, people make buying decisions based on what you can do for them.
Do people buy really buy the products or services that you offer? If you’re thinking this is a trick question then the answer is no. And the answer to this question is no. Think about your own personal buying decisions. Have you ever bought a toothbrush because you like the color that it adds to your bathroom arrangement? Or if you didn’t have children, would you buy a baby car seat because you thought it would go good with the way you’d look driving down the street? That would be ludicrous. The answer to this question is people make buying decisions because either they have a problem to solve, a need to be met, or a love or passion for a particular item.
Now going along with this analogy, if you want to be successful in what you sell, you must figure out two things. First, what is the biggest problem your products or service solves exclusively or better than everyone else? And secondly, you must figure out how your product or service is the exclusive answer to the person’s need. The two may sound synonymous but they’re not.
Let’s look at the market. The more you can narrow down who your target market is, the greater your value and profits will be. Think about a personals ad. I’ve never placed one before but if you read them, people are very specific on what they are looking for. “Seeking a 30-40 yr old woman with black wavy hair, brown eyes, with a great sense of humor, outgoing and adventurous, smart …” and on and on. You wouldn’t put an ad in the paper with, “Seeking woman.” And even if you did, you would get just about anything that moved responding to your ad.
The same goes in marketing. You have to be needle pin point accurate in the specific type of person that is seeking out your product to be their exclusive answer. Remember, you are answering “people’s” problems and not out to make a quick buck. You have to think long term not short. I heard someone a while ago say, “Some people go out to get customers to make a sale. The successful ones go out and make a sale to get a customer.”
Here’s the key. In your market, there are always “niche” or specialty markets within. A specialist always gets paid more than the general practitioner. If you can figure out what a specific niche market or multiple niche market is within your market then you can dominate your market.
How you do this is by offering exclusive solutions to your customers by your product or services. You may be really good at something and even better than most people in your field. Or you may be the only person doing a specific product or service that no one else is offering in your market area. If that’s the case then you have complete domination and are far more valuable than in a place where everyone does your specialty.
If you don’t think there is anything in your market think again. There’s always something that can be added to, subtracted from, done better, made easier, made more complex, etc…
Think of Domino’s Pizza. At the time they started there were tons of pizza places around town. They created a niche out of something common, pizza. They didn’t provide the best cooked pizza but the created the fastest delivered pizza positioning themselves around the colleges knowing that those smoking pot would soon be hungry and want fast delivered pizza. They probably didn’t even care how well it tasted. They just wanted a quick munchies fix.
In 2006, being a native born Hawaiian, I moved to Tucson, AZ and I was surprised to discover that there were no Authentic Hawaiian food places in town. The town was filled with Mexican food places, a few sandwich places and Italian. But that was pretty much the list.
Growing up in a family of cooks and my grandfather being a Hawaiian Chef in Hawaii, I decided to bring our Hawaiian food to Tucson and positioned myself to be the ONLY Authentic Hawaiian Cuisine in Tucson and started A Little Taste of Aloha Gourmet Hawaiian Food Catering. Although there were tons of restaurants and caterers we dominated the market and charged anywhere from $15 – $150/person depending on what they wanted. For 10 years until we left and still today, we were the ONLY Authentic Hawaiian food providers in Tucson.
Surprisingly, Authentic Hawaiian food solving the humdrum of food choices with caterers wasn’t the main niche or problem we solved. Within the catering industry, it was common for caterers to not show up, be late, have terrible food, have bad attitudes and be rude with customers and guests, and the list goes in. We built a reputation of always being on time, professional and friendly with our customers and their guests, provided excellent food and service and we backed it up with a 120% Satisfaction guarantee. If they were not satisfied with the food or service they received we offered a full 100% refund and 20% off of their next order.
We also offered a FREE Sample for up to 6 people, $150 value of our Hawaiian food. This took the guess work out of knowing whether or not our food was good. We booked 99.9% of our samples. Our primary clientele were affluent so the .1% non-bookings would usually be because we were not in their price range. This gave them the try before they buy and also eliminated the, “What if the foods not good,” on the day of the catering dilemma. If the foods not good on the day of the catering there is nothing you can do about it and your guests remember the experience that you hired them for.
So what is your niche market? How does your product or service meet your customer’s problems or desires exclusively? You can always modify and adjust your product or service to be the exclusive or best in your industry. One formula for figuring this out is to ask the question to some of the biggest problems in your industry, “Do you know how _________________?” (Fill the big problem(s) in the blank) and answer the question with how what you do answers that problem with, “What we do is _______________.”
Let us know what your new niche idea for your market is at our Get In Touch Page and feel free to ask us any questions about this article.
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