Small apparel factories in Asian countries do benchmark in their niche markets by promoting CSR initiatives

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) now has become a key to promote businesses, brands and even specific business units. CSR is one best way to show others that a company really cares about its society, environment, employees, and all other stakeholders. Why do most companies fail to gain their real outcomes that they ought to get from their CSR initiatives is because they downside to use it as a mean of promotion. Whether you are in a small business or engaged in large business, moral CSR would be the ultimate point where you can serve your business towards a successful sustainable survival.

Small apparel business firms in Asian countries do practice CSR as a very effective mean of promoting their business deals among their buyers or small niche markets. In countries such as Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and China, there are enormous amount of small apparel factories. However, it will not be sensible to say that they all factories play very successful in their businesses. Most of these export-oriented firms’ prime revenue sources are the countries in Europe, United States of America and other western countries who buy from them. Since these factories are small in scale, they mostly survive in their businesses with only one or two buyers who buy from them in a temporary basis. Nevertheless, there are also very successful small apparel firms with more than thousand employees and they earn a good income. Let us try to look-into further on why there is such a discrepancy. 

Noticeably successful firms are engaged in CSR activities and for sure, it remains as one of the main reasons for their sustainable survival. ‘CSR is one of the main reasons for why my buyers are insisting with my business and when a deal comes to end, my partners (buyers) always recommend other about my business’ said Mr. Bandula CEO of Rainbow Private Limited a medium size garment in Sri Lanka. Nevertheless, it is not to say that just actively participating and promoting CSR initiatives among your niche would only let your business to go up. Do not forget that CSR alone would never work unless if your business is up to the expected quality and customers’ requirements.  

There are some interesting stories on how small apparel factories in countries such as Sri Lanka, India, China and Thailand promote their CSR initiates among their niches (buyers). Milking scheme, vegetable scheme are two interesting ways how these firms do CSR with their employees and society. Most of these firms are situated in far villages and the people who live there are poor. Under milking scheme, the company will provide cows to some specific employees and all of the employees must take care of the cows. So that there is a basis and according to that basis, each employee must provide food to the cows and the milk will be equally distributed to the employees. Vegetable scheme also work in a similar manner.

It seems really funny as well interesting and these firms really being successful as they gain very loyal customers and a loyal niche market (buyers). Most of the buyers have started to prefer CSR in their choice of selecting suppliers as they a know a firm that takes care of employees and other stakeholders would take care of its buyers or customers as well.

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How can you promote your brand among your niche?

This would be the ultimate aim of selecting a profitable niche and if you know how to do correctly, then you will be very successful. You can select advertising, direct marketing, personal selling and even sales promotions as your mean of promoting. It all depends on your product category. Here I am only focusing on advertising.

Broadcast media (use radio for advertising): Radio may not be considered as glamorous as Tele-vision. It makes it more difficult to attract some talented professionals to design ads. Local radio has a particularly close to a local image and if your niche consists local people, then you can go for it. Talented radio professionals make their listeners to remember the ad.

Tele-vision: Due to the high exposure, glamour, and audiovisual impact of the Tele-vision, it has become the favored medium of buying new products, raising brand awareness and loyalty among your niche. Nowadays re-positioned brands also use this medium to attract their new niches. (Ex: Tigo) Tele-vision ads have short life-spans, most ads last for 15 or 30 seconds.

Outdoor media: Poster advertising is one of the oldest media for consumer goods advertising, sites on walls, hoardings and bus shelters and they can be leased for per calendar month.

Cinema: Cinema advertising takes advantage of high audiovisual impact and the captive audience but still requires a high quality and entertaining value.

Internet: forty years ago, the newest medium was Tele-vision, about 17 years ago it was cable Tele-vision and currently it is the internet. There is evidence that Tele-vision audiences are migrating to the internet. In the US, over a million prime time Tele-vision viewers have shifted to internet. Niche segmentation is very easy to accomplish with internet.

So now you have to decide on which one is really suitable for you. If you have anything to ask, you are encouraged to do so.

Mathangie

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Niche marketing Pros and Cons: would you lose your business if you only focusing on one niche?

Ok. Now it seems niche marketing is one way to quickly succeed with your business. However, everything in this world has its pros and cons. So what about niche marketing? There is no doubt that one can easily reach the target by focusing only in a most-significant niche in a small business.

Nevertheless, if your company is quiet big and capable of promoting it well too, then you can go for target markets. In case, a large company only focuses on a small niche, it means that it is losing on sales unless if it is not for specific reasons. However, does it mean that big companies can’t be successful with niche marketing? Yes. They can. How? Let’s say you own a large company that owes different business segments. So that for some segments you can only concentrate with specific niches. For an example, Wal-Mart has started marketing specific mugs that are especially designed for hunters in Africa.

Though you are big company, you still would have some business units that do not financially perform well and other segments, which are more profitable. I would recommend to allocate more budget for the cash cow segment (most profitable) when deciding on your promotional activities. Then for the units that do not financially perform well, you can stick with small niche and that niche should consist of customer who will definitely buy from you. Therefore, you can reduce on your production units and can too ensure that production does not exceed the demand from your small niche.

Mathu

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Different strategies of positioning a product in a niche: what would be more successful?

Positioning is an art of capturing a soft corner in your customers’ minds and you can do it in different ways. This is what your customer would know about your product and what would stand for the rest of the world regarding for you too. Let’s see some of the examples of positioning your product in your selected niche or niches.

Price or quality positioning: If your product is such very high in quality, then this is for you. Whenever a product has high quality, which is always consecrated with the highest price margins. Here what you remember when you are saying high-quality, it always results in less-bulk, long life-time, safety, excellent after sales services, warranty, ISO certifications and it should give the feeling to your customer that it worths to their paying. If your product has all of them, then you can set market above price margin for it for sure. In addition, since you have the ability of producing high quality product, it is always advisable to concentrate much on your branding because quality-seekers would prefer to buy bands rather than just looking for products.

Benefits positioning: As a good marketer as well as a good businessperson, you should always say that you are selling benefits rather than just saying you have a product to sell. When your product has a worthy benefit than your competitor, then you can use that as your strategy of positioning. Best example would be Nokia for its user-friendliness.

Unique selling proposition: If you think that your brand or product has a unique feature, then you can go for it. Let’s say you the first to introduce something in your market, then you can always use that as a tactic of promoting yourself.

Competitor based positioning: If you are in a very competitive market, then you should look-into what your competitor is doing. Here you might position your brand against to competitor. For an example, adbrite is positioned against to Google adsense.

Cultural based positioning: If you love your tradition and religion very much, you can go for positioning your product with cultural symbols or a value that is most respected in your tradition.

So that deciding on your positioning strategy is much depended on your product and its capabilities and it is up to you to select on it.

Mathangie

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Is it possible to make million dollars with a specific niche-concentrated small business?

Nowadays, it seems everyone is wanted to earn million dollars but in reality, only a few people have succeeded in getting into this. However,earning million dollars is not just a dream and is possible if you own a giant industry leading company in any field or if you are working for multinational firm or you born with enchanting look and for your poses, someone is ready to pay for you. Nevertheless, we all do not have the above-mentioned opportunities. I assume at this moment, when you are reading this article, you own a small business or planning to start a one.

When you have a product to sell, or talents you owe that you think others are willing to pay for it; you are now to select, target and position your product in an appropriate market. What a person who want to earn average profits would go and select a target market (please read the article on Understand the basic myths behind target markets before currying on your niche)) and would design his or her positioning strategies for that particular market. Now a person who is passionate about earning million dollars would go for the most attractive and relevant niche and would position his or her product with significant strategies. Here I am listing down some ways you can make million dollars with your small niche.

You can be a successful person if you can cover your broader target market’s requirements by paying less efforts along to your most focused niche in which you are paying the maximum effort.

When selecting your niche, be careful on the profitability of it. This has two meanings that your niche may consist very rich people who are willing to pay high or consisting of people who are dying with a need of buying from you. Thus, it ensures the willingness as well the ability of purchasing.

Invest on developing your brand loyalty and emotional relationship between your brand and to your niche. Here your brand must represent your niche. The examples can be pen downed such as Mercedes Benz for upper class people, Emerald for good-looking men and MAS holdings for the people who prefer wearing sustainable clothing.

Try maximizing your quality to the utmost level and now you have the chance of bargaining for a very high profit from your niche. (Always evidence your quality with ISO certifications)

Constantly show some changes in terms of your business improvements and this is the best way to sustain your existing niche. Once you get the feeling that you are successfully maintaining a good deal with your existing niche, and then try capturing new ones with very similar requirements. Nevertheless, you should remember that new niches only differ slightly in their requirements and can cover them with your current strategies.

Also, try to coordinate or make relationships among the niches’ requirements. The brilliant example: years back, Baby soap companies in India observed a fall-down in the population of Babies whom they were targeting. Years later, they came up with a concept of ‘skin-soft mums’ and the logic behind if a baby soap is good for babies, then they should be good for their mums as well.

The above-mentioned tactics would help you to identify a profitable niche. However, if you really want to make money with them, you now need to design brilliant positioning strategies.

Senthan

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Why small businesses should turn to niche marketing: the real concerns behind niche marketing

Why should a small business stick to a much-significant niche? If doing so, wouldn’t they lose other customers and the gains stimulated by them? This is one of the obligatorily asked questions by everyone who run a small business and in process of finding their actual customers. Let us try to understand the sense behind niche marketing. The ultimate challenge of any business owner in this world is to find their target markets unless their products are such ‘must be used at each home’ and thus there is no need to hunt on who their actual customers are. However when we say ‘target markets’, it seems making a much broader view. If you want to learn the basics about target markets, please read our article on The basic myths behind target markets.

Let’s say you are running a small jewelry shop and producing all kinds of jewels. Now you are targeting everyone who wears jewels and you do not really worry about whether they like gold, or platinum or silver or whatever. Now you decide to focus only on designing gold and right now, you know customers who love wearing gold will only come to you. Later you decide limiting your business with ‘gold wedding rings’ and your shop is also renamed as a gold wedding ring house. So that, only people who are about to marry and love gold will come to your shop. What do you think whether you are losing or gaining? I would say you are gaining and here I have listed the reasons behind.

Think about the cost: earlier, you were focusing at all. Thus, obviously you would have had a greater material cost than you have right now. Also from your material suppliers (gold, silver, and platinum), you would have bought in small quantities. Now you have only one supplier and purchasing from him in a huge quantity. So that, you have better chances of creating better ‘supplier relationship’ and gaining a portion of saving in your purchases.

Think about the varieties: earlier, you would have produced huge variety of rings or whatever jewels. Now you are only focusing on ‘gold wedding rings’ and having an opportunity to produce wide varieties of wedding rings. So that, you can become a specialist in this field.

Customer behavior: Assume yourself as a customer who needs to purchase a wedding ring and what would you do? Will you prefer going for a normal jewel shop or for a wedding ring shop?

Do you now agree that you have better chances with a concentrated niche rather than just targeting everyone in your market coverage area? However, it is not to say a niche will be profitable for all categories of businesses.


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Understand the basic myths behind target markets before planning on your niche

Before, currying on your niche, you need a basic understanding on what a target market refers to since this would be the very basic of deciding on a niche market. A target market consists of customers who are willing to buy from you and having the ability to access you. When a marketer decides on target markets, he or she should consider the following four bases that remain the prime stones of building on it.

Democratic base: Here you would classify your target customers or segments based on democratic variables such as age, income, sex, occupation and so on. So your business is targeted to a specific set of customers who belong to a similar democratic category. Let’s assume you are producing a product that costs around 500 dollars and now you decide only limiting your promotional activities to those who earn above 1000 dollars per month. This is how you will decide on your target market based on democratic base.

Geographic base: Here you would target a set of people who belong to a specific geographic area. This may be a region, province, or even a nation. Nevertheless, this might be not that an effective way of targeting.

Behavioral base: This is a very sensational way of targeting and a behavioral base target market would consist a set of people belong to have similar behavioral characteristics. This includes knowledge about the product, consumer behavior, purchasing patterns and usage rate etc. However, the marketer needs investing on excellent research to study and to find the appropriate segment here.

Psychographic base: This is also another way of targeting the segments based on their psychographic requirements. This includes status and class classifications. For example, you may have to decide on whether to select an upper class segment or middle class segment for your business. However, it may drawback in the point where you need to study the variable aspects such income on finding out the psychographic segment.

So, got it? Hope you are now having a better understanding and enjoyed this piece. If so, let me know your feedback and read other articles in our blog.

Sen
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