You’re an expert at what you do and nobody else does it better. Getting new business should be a piece of cake and everyone will be banging down your door to give you money.
WRONG!
The ‘if you start it, they will come’ mentality is a common misconception. In almost any industry or marketplace there is competition for what you’re doing. Other people are doing the same thing and some better than you!
How do you figure out how to position and run your company?
Market Research
This is the process of learning everything you can about your business in your market area. Let’s talk about some of the things you should be looking for and how to get started.
Who’s your competition?
This is the first thing you should do; find out who your competitors are and what they’re doing. Learning about them and their methods could give you some great insight for getting your new venture off the ground. Don’t copy what they’re doing or steal their information.
The goal is to learn some best practices. Chances are they’ve been doing it a while and may have some procedures nailed.
Make sure you don’t dwell on the competition or worry about how they might crush you. This is not productive. Learn what you can, find their weaknesses and then figure out how to do it better!
Demographic research
Learning who lives in your market area is very important for your new business. If you’re selling baby-sitting services and you live in a retirement community in Florida, I think you’re in trouble! It’s important to know if there are people in your market who truly need what you’d be selling. If there is no need then you have no business to run!
Your ideal client
This one could be difficult to know if you have yet to start your business or have any clients.
Who would be the best people to market your company to?
What needs do they have?
Find out everything you can about them. Some important things to discover are their ages, ethnicity, income level, location, type of neighborhood, marital status, kids or no kids, hobbies, professions and buying habits. I’m sure you can think of many other attributes common to your future ideal client. This information will help you in crafting your marketing plan to reach these people. As your business grows you will start to see common attributes of your best clients.
Price sensitivity
Are you going to get paid for your service in a way that makes it worthwhile? There may be a need but if the market is saturated with cut throat competitors who are willing to perform a similar service for half the price you could be in trouble. You will have to work twice as hard to prove you’re different or better than them. If the service you provide is seen as typical then it will be hard to compete.
Local web searches
What are you future clients typing into search engines when looking for you? How should you name your company or position yourself online to attract those clients or come up on the first page of Google? Web searches will soon become the number one lead source for most businesses. Getting on the first page online (or in everyone’s mind) will be of the highest importance.
Learn new things
Trade shows are another great way to learn more about your industry and meet other people doing the same thing.
We still attend trade shows and seminars regularly to learn about new methods and products in our industry. Obviously, we learned a lot more when we first started our business but we still learn great things at these events every year. It’s also a great way to make connections in the industry with people who could help you down the road.
Time for action
Sit down this week and brainstorm everything you can think of about how your business will approach the market. Market area, saturation of similar companies, target client profile, sensitivity to price, availability of your service, etc. will all be critical to knowing how to position your company for success.
Remember, you have to be different than everyone else and find a way to appeal to your target client better than your competition. Find out more about that here.
Commit to working on your market research this week; it will be instrumental in telling you how to get started.