When in doubt, create a new category for your small business
Posted by Dave Mace at 6:00 am
There’s a little bit of something for everyone out there. Don’t like the taste of Coke? Try Pepsi. Don’t like Pepsi? Try Dr. Pepper. Maybe you’re one of those people who doesn’t need a brand, just the functional flavor, refreshment and kick delivered by a caffeinated soda. So you prefer Big K Cola. Or maybe you define your identity by being the quintessential anti-brand person. So you drink Sam’s Club Cola.
But whatever your taste. Whatever your price sensitivity. Whatever your reason for purchasing a product, chances are very slim that you won’t be able to find it among the universe of choices awaiting you at your local store or nearest Internet portal.
Even trying to count the categories of areas of consumer desires is tiring in itself:
- Low price
- Cheap
- Prestige price
- Luxury
- Economy
- Middle of the road
- Good for the environment
- Authentic
- Rare
- Convenient
- Trendy, but not too ostentatious
- Best in class
- Performance
- Safe
The list goes on and on. If you’re a marketer, you know what I’m talking about. The good news for consumers (and the challenging or rewarding thing for marketers, depending on your outlook) is that there are as many (sometimes more) opportunities to get products that satisfy all these needs.
Many times as marketers, we dismiss these needs as not real or as flighty. Case in point, I talk to farmers all the time who still believe “organic will never take off.” Of course, we do this at our peril. But for those of you who are willing, there are tremendous opportunities to go and seize in the marketplace.
Increasingly, consumers are combining many of the desires (and dozens more) listed above into packages of requirements that constitute the value for which they’re willing to expend time and money to acquire. In other words, they want trendy, cheap, quality and convenient to exist in the same product or brand.
Enter what I call the “good enough” brand. Here’s the premise: If you can create a trendy product, reduce quality a little, be convenient and radically reduce costs so you could offer the product at a much lower price, then you set yourself up as a much more attractive alternative to—at the very least—a sizeable portion of the market. We’ve seen brands like Yellow Tail (wine) and Hyundai (cars) do just that over the past 10 years.
As they go along, these brands sometimes even migrate into mainstream or premium tiers.
In any case, the beautiful thing is that you can slice and dice a market a hundred different ways to carve out a place for your product or service. Granted, some markets are easier than others, such as the beverage market and its many categories: energy drinks, hydrating drinks, sodas, juices, mixes, and on and on. Others are not so easy. There are seemingly just so many things you can do to pizzas and hamburgers. And yet, our little metropolis of Wichita, Kansas, has seen a half dozen successful new burger chains pop up in just the past several years.
So, remember: When in doubt, segment, slice, carve, divide, subdivide and create a new category. Trust me, it’s a lot easier than trying to take your competitors head on.
Tweet
