At this time and era, competition claims to be #1 factor that you should consider before you differentiate and build your own identity. This is the main reason why you should be well versed with how you can set your business in the market and end up getting a larger market share. It may seem difficult to differentiate and build your identity but it’s not impossible.
Look at some brands with world reputation that were struggling before they grew. Look at KFC, ZARA and Pepsi. These companies have over time built their brand identities to command the large market share they bare commanding today. Learning from them you will easily notice that effective differentiation is the scaling power and still the biggest challenge that startups are facing.
Startups are forced to compete with big fishes, the reason why many entrepreneurs give up before they make their first profit. In this brief, we are going to walk you through the most important part of effective differentiation and building your brand to beat the competition and position yourself in the market.
What is market positioning and why is it important?
In simple words, positioning is giving context that will help people make sense of their world to the products and services you are about to sell to them. It may address new things or things we already have with us today. The buyers will never know what your products are all about without context. Positioning is very important for many reasons.
A good example is when the market is crowded. In such a case, you should be positioning yourself in a unique manner. This means you should explain what your products or services mean and give buyers reasons they should go for them given there are many similar products and services in this market. With that in mind, how do you position yourself in the market? This is not supposed to be complicated or confusing.
The market
If you want to travel to the nearest fueling station to get your vehicle refilled, you first of all have to understand the importance of fuel for your vehicle. After that, you should learn the route to the fueling station. In our case today, the market is like the fuel and your business is the vehicle. If you have little or no information about why your business needs the market, you are destined to fail.
The market is the most influential factor that determines the success or failure for most companies. First and foremost, you should understand the market. In the process of understanding your market, please ask yourself the below questions. Who are your potential buyers? What are the attributes or the dimensions? What is the relationship between your product and the market? Answer these questions bearing in mind that you are the determining factor but your buyers will play a greater role in future.
Succinct positioning statement
Now that you have answers to the above questions, what follows is the positioning statement. This is now the case that you are supposed to execute from the sellers perspective. It starts by determining the best way to position yourself in the market. For this reason, you should start by defining your target customers, note the ones that are dissatisfied, mark your product as new in the market and eventually pin point the problems you expect the product to solve.
Position deliberately
You now have to take a moment and think about what you are about to do. Have you ever asked yourself what if what you have just built is not the thing that you have actually built? If yes, then you can clearly understand what I am talking about. It doesn’t matter even if you built something for a purpose. The fact is that the purpose is not always the way you should position your products and services. What this shows is that even when you are thinking of positioning yourself in the market, you should do it deliberately and if possible create a new category.
There must be a process
The reality of the matter is that positioning is not a single days affair. This indicates that you should at all chances have a clear process to follow throughout the entire process. This is not new because you might have learnt it in school. The positioning process should be easy and very clear to avoid confusions and misguidances. The process should be as simple as shown below:
The above questions show that the value you bring depends entirely on the customer segment, the key unique attributes and many other factors.
Be innovative to win customers
Every seller in the market wants to win customers and the difference will come depending on how innovative you are. It all starts with understanding the competition and coming up with new and innovative ways of disrupting the market and getting your specific market share. Start with knowing what your core differentiator is and how you should scale the exact thing.
Customer service
To win the market and keep your first time buyers, you should prioritize the customer service. The fact is that the customers will not love you when you offer bad services and your competitors will be waiting for such alternatives. According to statistics, more than 50% of product and service users said they would try a new brand if they were failed on the first shot.
What this means for you is that Customer service is very imperative. Those were some of the helpful points that would make it easy for you to position your startup and get a share of the market. The information is not limited; market keeps on changing and you should be knowing the trend.