Understanding Your Place In The Market – An Essential Business Approach

It’s hard to know where we fit and how we can best operate if we’re not entirely sure where we belong. Of course, a period of discovery can always be vital, but when it comes to the mainline productivity we apply in a given direction, doing so on strong fundamentals is essential. This is true no matter if you’re a painter trying to figure out their artistic style, or a business leader trying to identify their strengths and which areas of a business they may operate best in.

It also relates to your company and what kind of market it serves. Identifying this can help you focus on pursuing that market, while also never closing the door to others. It’s why e-cigarettes, for instance, are often targeted to the younger crowd as a new, healthier direction compared to the toxic alternatives of old. The packages, product designs, and marketing language surrounding these products thoroughly identify that.

But how can we understand our place in the market without much grounding, or if the market seems to be changing? Let’s consider that, below:

Research & Insight Services

Certain services can not only provide you insight into particular markets, but global markets, allowing you to get all of the data you need if you hope to expand abroad. This is essential for many companies, because even with the best executive research, nothing beats experience, familiarity, and understanding the history of a given market up until now. This is why services like Brand Catalyser are so important in helping you realize your marketing strategy – they can quite literally perform all of the tough legwork for you and refine that into actionable insight.

Direct Surveys & Discussions

Entering the conversation surrounding a given market is a good way to understand it, but often, we need to submerge ourselves into it in order to understand the approach. It’s also important to know how that contextual conversation is framed. Surveys, focus groups, and social media research can make a big difference here. We can utilize an amusing example to make this point, showcasing that even top Hollywood executives can follow the wrong approach from time to time.

Performance Testing

Testing how a particular product or service works within a given industry, field or space will help you get real world data without having to roll that out to everyone. It might be that you begin advertising your managed IT services to firms that you may not have expected would require them in your current form, such as startups in the tech space, or perhaps small media companies in your local city. With a test drive and the ability to manage and measure a marketing campaign, you can apply those actionable results with care, and use that insight to make decisions into the future. You may be surprised just how well that works.

With this advice, we’re certain you’ll be able to fundamentally understand your place in the market; no matter if you’re reasserting yourself in a current space or hoping to penetrate another.