Series: Gain Market Share Now
This five-part series is still in progress.
Gain Market Share Now – Part 1
Even now, and perhaps like never before, there are two types of market-share you can and should seek to gain: 1) Share of awareness, especially among new target audiences; and 2) Share of dollars, whether you are selling products, a service, or fundraising. The short-term benefits will help you thrive during this more challenging economy, and you’ll be shoring up gains that will propel your growth when the economy improves (and it will).
Here are the first two of seven steps marketers and fundraisers alike can and should take now to gain market share:
1. Listen anew to your audiences. Their thoughts, feelings and needs have changed.
Do your research. Ask the right questions that get to the heart of what they need, what will motivate them, and what they need to hear and see from you.
2. Refine and strengthen your primary and secondary messages.
Solid research will produce the necessary guidance for adjusting your messaging so that you can apply the first “C” of the 7Cs of Persuasion, “Customize”, to be more persuasive.
To be adept at customizing your communications, you have to ask the right questions. Do you know what to ask and how to ask?
Gain Market Share Now – Part 2
Now that you’ve done your research and have an advanced understanding of your audiences’ needs and what compels them, the next two steps will move you closer to making market share gains (see Gain Market Share Now – Part 1).
3. Refine and strengthen your offers and calls-to-action.
Your offers need to be more competitive: present more options, greater discounts or incentives. And…this is key…the language used to ask your customers or donors can be and needs to be more action-oriented. We write copy and scripts that promotes emotion, rationale, and directs action.
(To be more competitive, make sure a thorough competitive analysis gives you the necessary information to have an edge.)
4. Utilize proven marketing and sales tools and approaches.
Be sure you know works and why. And don’t underestimate the chances that there are tools and processes that will produce better results.
If your game is business-to-business sales, don’t just nurture prospects, net more sales calls and sales closings with a solid system and more effective presentation and sales skills. Ask me about our system that will secure sales calls at a higher rate than you’re seeing right now.
If you are conducting direct mail (for business or fundraising), the optimal mail-piece or combination of mail pieces can make a world of the difference. We’ve been able to double a client’s results with the right mail-piece.
What’s working well for you now? What’s not producing the way you wish?
Gain Market Share Now – Part 3
To recap from Parts 1 and 2, the first four of the seven steps to Gain Market Share Now include the following:
1. Listen anew to your audiences. Their thoughts, feelings and needs have changed.
2. Refine and strengthen your primary and secondary messages.
3. Refine and strengthen your offers and calls-to-action.
4. Utilize proven marketing and sales tools and approaches.
If you need to catch up on the details of each, please go back; scroll down for those posts.
This part focuses on one of the single most powerful of all seven steps, and the one that has accounted for some our clients being able to see double-digit growth this year. Some of the most dramatic and exciting case histories from my career can be attributed to this strategy.
5. Increase, and be more creative with how you create sampling opportunities.
Instead of underestimating the potential impact from product/service sampling, go ahead and over-estimate what it can do. Think big, because a positive sampling experience is a brand-changer. It’s a closer.
A sampling experience can take shape in a wide variety of ways and in new ways than you’ve ever thought. Clearly, the best is in person, yet effective use of media opens up new possibilities.
The emphasis needs to be on the “experience” (emotional and rational). Think in terms of when and where the experience can be novel and even surprising.
For examples of what has worked well for us, reply or contact me directly.
Meanwhile, what’s the most creative form of product sampling you’ve produced, or experienced?
Gain Market Share Now – Part 4
The curtain opens at Carnegie Hall and each of the 12 members of the Big Apple A Cappella Choir takes a deep breath, preparing to fill lift their voices in song and delight the audience with a performance worthy of a standing ovation. Yet the audience is instantly overwhelmed with confusion. The singing has begun but everyone is out of key in a perplexing mess no one could possibly describe as music. Each member is singing a different song.
Ideally, each member of the choir sings a part of the same song that harmonizes with and supports the other singers.
The same is true with the different parts of your marketing, and never before has it been more important for marketers and fundraisers to take this, the sixth step towards gaining market share now:
6. Increase the integration of all marketing actions and initiatives with your website and Internet marketing.
Time and again I’ve seen the results of a campaign (whether it’s only a direct mailing or a multi-media program) being strengthen by incorporating the client’s web site, as well as the use of other media. And frequently I’m seeing marketers and fundraisers not taking the time or steps to combine their most powerful communications tools.
At the heart of the rationale for integration are three parts:
- Improved results
- Increased efficiencies
- Strengthening of the brand
With huge populations turning first to websites to garner information for the decisions they make and as the place where they take action, it’s essential to make Internet marketing a core, foundational part of every marketing component.
Is your organization fully integrating all marketing, sales or fundraising assets?
Part 5 will be added during the days ahead. Please check back for the next installments.
