Entries from December 1, 2004 - January 1, 2005
Trying to Be Everything to Everybody?
That's your problem -- Defining your industry as say "Media" is too broad and not specific enough. Taking the opposite approach would be more advantagous to your company in the shorter and longer term.
For example, spinning off a unique sub-category of "advertising" will yield far better for your brand than broadly trying to encompass the concept of "media", which has already been divided and sub-divided into many distinct categories (err... industries) in the minds eye of the consumer.
Much easier to divide and sub-divide your market indefinately than it is to collapse it all together under a single brand, which is what you may be trying to do. Don't.
Even if consolidating your industry is what you're ultimately driving at, you must know that a market can't be collapsed under a single brand until you own numerous positions within that market.
It can't be an accelerated process and it takes an extremely savvy strategist at the helm to execute. It's highly doubtful even the Big Two-or Three in your industry have this person, yet it's the kind of undertaking you should fear most by your competitors.
Vast resources and mass market acceptance has placed your industry's top-guns in the enviable position of being able to deploy customized solutions as and when new market opportunities crop up. Before less developed companies can organize a response, big companies have subsumed all viable niche opportunities into themselves. Sadly, the majority of advertising agencies operating today belong to but a handful of holding companies whose evil purpose it is to control everything.
Small businesses like yours have no such initiative of scale. Fortunately for us guys, most attempts by large companies to consolidate the market in such a manner fail. Despite succeeding in advertising, trying to concentrate on too many targets usually leads to hitting none. Therefore your marketing mandate is to deliver a more complete argument to narrower audience.
Your absolute best chance of dominating anything is to paint yourself into a corner. Stake out a niche and own it. Do everything in your power to make competition with you impossible. You can't succeed in that if you're trying to be everything to everybody--you must patiently cultivate authority and trust within a small crowd possessing well-defined consumer needs. Only after you own your segment totally can you think about encroaching on someone else's.
Ty
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Them Solutions Are the Magic Bullet
There is in fact a magic bullet in marketing that will virtually guarantee your sale. Pay attention. It is a performance-assured solution to an acutely felt problem or need.
A marketing message armed to the hilt with sensitivity to
a person's pain hits home every single time. It's just that some
professionals get so absorbed in the smoke-and-mirrors aspect of
promotion that they neglect the simple notion of Supply and Demand
(should be redubbed Demand and Supply for the modern era. More on this
later) that has driven commerce forward since day one.
Fortunately, it doesn't take exceptional powers of discernment
spot a humongous need. The marketer's job has been simplified with the
advance of internet technologies. Many and populous communities of people across
the net have organized for the expressed purpose of telling you what's missing from their lives.
Don't do self-indulgent advertising. The magic happens when you're attentive to other people's problems.
Now you know -- lock and load.
Tip: Your window into the market's collective conscious are high concentrations of critics. If you want to tune into their frequency you are handicapping yourself if you aren't paying attention to Amazon.com and other feedback enhanced portals.
Pettiness Is A Corporate Condition Too
So, in todays news...That's some shit over at Kottke.org
I can think of more than one community besides the bloggers that could greatly benefit from an organization which supports individuals through incidents of corporate strongarming, much as the ACLU mounts efforts against government agencies and corporations which perpetrate social injustices.
As it is, almost noone emerges victorious from a legal battle against a large corporation without more than a few wounds. A watchdog organization, rallied for the public good, could grant individuals access to the kind of legal resources that give large corporations a decided edge in legal matters.
When push comes to shove, the public can and will mobilize heavy forces.
This isn't the last we'll hear about this sort of thing. Rather, it's a sign that the system is just starting to adjust to the integration of powerful new technologies into the cultural fabric. The Blogosphere's going to get very interesting in 2005.