Friday, July 29, 2005

Own Your Marketplace

Is your company the market leader? When customers, prospects and others think of your industry, is your brand first to mind?

Everyone has competitors. Some industries have dozens...maybe hundreds!!! But there is only room for two or three companies to dominate a space. In fact, only one can really "own" the space with two others renting some of the mind-share.

Let's think about some big national brands (but this is true for local products and services in any given community):

Book Stores: Barnes and Noble. To a lesser extent, Borders. Did you think of any others? (No, Amazon own the "On-line Bookstore" space).

Microprocessors: Intel. Then you think of AMD.

Personal Computers: Dell. Then Apple or Hewlett Packard (Compaq).

Coffee Shops: Starbucks. A few of you might have some 2nd choices depending on geography.

Business Newspapers: The Wall Street Journal.

So if you are not the dominate player in your arena, does someone own the space? Until someone controls 20% of the market share, then the space is still wide open. Once a company is seen as the "gorilla", it is difficult to unseat them. Perception is very sticky in people's heads.

In addition, once someone owns the top position, the competition will often concede the leadership role. While still continuing to do good work, the smaller company will not challenge the main brand's ownership of the industry.

How about your company? Where are you positioned? Is there a chance for you to become the leader? What are you doing today to help you achieve that role?

Have A Great Day.

Thom Singer
www.thomsinger.com
thom@thomsinger.com

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