Carving a niche position provides the ability to differentiate, while providing your organisation with the capability to reconnect and sell to customers with more value.
The pandemic has provided us with space to rethink how to run and organise our businesses, especially in sectors hardest hit such as retail, technology and travel.
However, there is no reason why your business needs to use the small-margin, commoditised, me-too playbook when there is the potential to become a specialist in a niche area.
Given the current economic situation, there is increased competition and lesser demand. Coupled with a failure to differentiate from most of the competition; this puts your business looking like a copy of everyone else and therefore selling your services at an auction, to the lowest bidder.
How do you relook at your positioning and approach, in order to differentiate and build a reputation for delivering high-value, in-demand solutions to your customers?
Simply put, the answer is to become the go-to specialist in a selected area that your business can deliver superior value in. Your organisation has to become the preferred solutions provider for your area of specialty.
In order to do so, you have to figure out how to deliver overwhelming and superior business value that your customers will not bargain on price and you can sell-in the value you deliver.
Here are some techniques from our playbook for you to consider.
Focus. Concentrate your resources, messaging, priorities from the start. Focus on your messaging and reflect the customer’s challenges and needs in their own words. This helps some prospects disqualify themselves, saves you precious time, and helps you pay more attention to the leads that matter.
Positioning is key. Instead of being a one-stop shop for your customer’s every need, and therefore a confusing jumble of products, services and activities, consider building your brand around a core theme or market.
Ensure that all your activities revolve around that core with a goal to become the dominant player in your specialist field.
Do not spread your resources too thin. Concentrate on a specific target audience that is large enough to provide revenue and realistic profits. This will help you build a base of customers and success stories that will drive momentum.
Be a long-term partner. Stop focusing on a transactional model of securing sales. Look at each customer as an account and think about LTV and how a positive relationship will advance a business outcome for your customer.
Offer specific outcomes. Be the partner that understands the problem and provides a specific prescription for your customer. Make sure you can go beyond talking about the problem or selling features and service capabilities.
Instead, provide a map to the outcome, and how you will measure success in terms of the results.
Talk about business outcomes. Expand on how you will help your customer do things faster, or with less cost, or earn more revenue/profit because they are working with you.
As a partner providing solutions, the goal is to solve problems for your customers. Hopefully, at a cost that provides you with some profit.
However, to become the preferred choice in your space, you have to identify a critical and urgent problem that your competitors are not addressing; develop a specific and measurable solution to this problem; declare ownership of the space that the problem resides in before solving the problem for your customers.
This will provide you with a steady stream of customers that want to work with you.
We are Brand Utility is a business consultancy. We work with brands in the corporate, retail, travel and technology spaces.
We offer strategy and tactics to support growth outcomes - revenue, scale, regional expansion and market entry – for our clients.
Areas of support include:
· Strategic communications: Approach to market, brand concept and map, positioning, messaging, story and narrative, thought leadership
· Marketing: Campaign/programme planning, story-based marketing execution, digital marketing, community amplification, content planning and production, go-to-market execution
· Lead generation: Digital advertising, social media advertising, social commerce, e-commerce
· Integration of marketing with business operations: We plan and execute as a seconded marketing and/or PR lead for your brand
Discover more about our services at our website or book an exploratory consultation through this link.
Photo by 五玄土 ORIENTO on Unsplash
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