Every business needs to think about getting the most out of its marketplace. If you’re not increasing turnover every year, your business is shrinking in real terms.
Many businesses simply try to pick up extra sales wherever they can. While this opportunistic approach can be effective in the early days, it is unlikely to sustain longer-term growth.
There are several strategic options you can pursue to get the most out of your marketplace such as selling more to existing customers, focusing your customer service and marketing efforts on retaining customers, expanding your customer base to include similar people who are not currently customers, selling through new channels or into new markets and using your core competences to create new products or services
This guide describes methods you can consider to increase your market share and how to plan, manage and monitor the growth.
1. Assess your customer base:
There are many ways to sell more to existing customers and potential customers like them. But before you start trying to maximise your market share, you need to make sure you fully understand how you are perceived by both existing and potential customers.
2. Work out the key questions:
The first stage is to address the core questions about who buys from you, how and when they buy. You need to be clear about:
• who your customers are
• what they buy
• why they buy
• how they buy
• who else could buy from you
• the typical budget of existing and new buyers
• where else they buy from
This is where market research becomes crucial. Knowing your customers is about getting up close and personal with them. You have to be prepared to put yourself in their shoes. You have to be prepared to be patient, attentive and compassionate. Their fear must become your fear, their problems, your problem, their needs, your needs. You must be willing to put yourself second and put them first.
Knowing your customers is about understanding the human nature. You have to familiarize yourself with stuffs like motivation [what moves people to act] psychology [why do people do like they do], perception [how people receive and interpret information] and other areas of human natures.
3. Position for the future:
Remember that the reasons customers buy from you now will not necessarily be the reasons they buy from you in six months or a year’s time. And if you consider expected trends in customer behaviour and your market, you may be the first to exploit a niche and gain market share quickly.
For example,
how will your customers prefer to place orders?
While they may prefer a phone call or face-to-face visit now, is there a trend in your market for online ordering systems?
If you are one of the first businesses in your sector to offer the facility, you could gain significant market share.
Use your research to get as clear a picture of the future as you can. It’s often difficult to predict with certainty – but the more you know about how your customers and market will look in the medium to long term, the more likely you are to successfully build your market share.
You cannot attract the right kind of followers you want for your business if they don’t know about your existence.
After all is said and done, it is the business, company, product or service that is known to the target customers that will gain a large market share. This is a very vital element of the steps needed to increase your business market share. It’s just common sense; people buy from those they know. So here is the question
WHAT OPTIONS ARE AVAILABLE SO THAT CUSTOMER KNOWS YOU?
• Social Media: The internet is fast becoming the world’s most populous domain. You cannot phantom the number of people and the number of hours spent online. So, if you are serious about promoting your business go online
• Branding: A brand is the difference between a business and a company. If all you are is a business then you are dead. People don’t become fans, followers, believers or addicts of businesses, they identify with companies.
A company is a living entity. A business is an economic activity.
• Advertise, Advertise, Advertise: This speaks for you itself get all forms of advertisement, online, offline, newspaper, radio
4. Sell more to existing customers:
It’s often easier and more effective to sell more to existing customers than it is to acquire new ones. Once you understand why your existing customers buy from you, you can examine ways of getting them to buy more or more frequently.
• Encourage more frequent buying
You can increase market share by getting customers to buy more frequently.
If your research shows customers buy at a particular time, make contact with them just beforehand. For example, if you know that a business buys its stock from you at the end of each month, a courtesy phone call, email or letter in the middle of the month can be effective.
• Get customers to spend more
Where appropriate, encourage customers to buy a premium product or service that better meets their needs and provides a superior return for you. This is known as ‘trading up’.
You could also offer purchase incentives and price promotions on items that they usually buy from competitors, such as ‘buy one get one free’ or ‘buy for ten months and get two free’.
5. Get old customers back
If people have bought from you before, they may buy from you again. You need to find out why they stopped buying from you and apply that knowledge to regain their custom.
Identify why customers stopped buying from you. Consider whether your product or service is:
• no longer necessary
• too expensive
• unsatisfactory
• being beaten by a competitive offer
6. Consider diversification
Growth by creating new products or services to sell to existing or new customer bases is inherently risky, but when handled well it can transform a business.
Author: Hemant DharniDharka
www.theonlineca.com