Beat your competitors

World of industries is messed up with massive amount of competition, which absolutely necessitates an entrepreneur to come up with different strategies to make his/her business great from competitors. Here are some simple but sharp weapons that a small business entrepreneur can use to overcome the sick of competition and to beat them out from the way.

Reach them before anyone else does

The first thing what any businessperson should do is to reach the customers before anyone else does and this the most effective plus most challenging part of the business. The best sources to find new customers are the local Magazines and Newspapers, which contains loads of Advertisements. Some magazines even do categorize their Advertisements and make it easy to identify the type of Advertisements. Therefore, one who sells facial cream would go to a niche magazine (that focuses on weddings or beauty tips) and identify those who are advertising about their beauty parlors or Spas and they can be turned into as B2B customers.

See your product as your customer

Assume that you are a customer who needs your product and then go to supermarkets or the possible places where you can access it. Then, you will find whether your product is available in different destinations, whether your dealers know well about your product and so on. This is the best way to increase the accessibility of your product.

Ask your customer

Study your customers’ minds whether they are happy with this product or not. However, some people tend not to respond honestly when doing some surveys or focus groups. Therefore, if possible, you pretend to be a customer who just needs an advice from another customer regarding the usability, quality, and the price of your product and speak to them very casually. This way you can get genuine opinions and most importantly..........

Just studying would cause no gain. Therefore, invest on improvements

Most people just do market research as a procedure and never implement new things and this is the point where they fail. So, implement whatever you were suggested by the customers.

Network Network and Network

This is the most important task. First, try to market your products within your own personal network such as friends, relatives, college mates and with your work-place buddies. They will give genuine opinions about the product and would also influence it with their own networks....so the network would start growing.

Build loyalty        

Whenever a customer makes a purchase, get all possible information about themselves and database them. After one or two months, call them, ask how the product works, and most importantly, don’t forget to ask them whether they are interested in buying another. However, never try to make it as a request or even forcing and your voice should be very casual.

Bother much about ladies

You never know that lady customers can be turned into your best loyal customers if they are really satisfied with the product and their influence cycle is really vast. So, the maximum you get lady customers, the chances are high to get more loyal customers.

 Guest posting blog or forum

This is ultimate point where you can give an option for your customers to post their views about your products and is one great way to promote online.

 Never limit sales with local markets...try eBay

EBay is the greatest choice for small businesses. Just because the business is operated locally, it doesn’t mean that the sales should be limited locally. EBay can bring best bargaining for a product that sells on average.

Forget about high quality websites and merchant accounts

If you want to expand your business online, go for a free software such as wordpress to design your website and get the coding from cost effective payment processors such as Paypal or checkout.com, create a simple online store and promote it online.

Self promote with B2B articles

Write articles about your brand and publish them as B2B articles in the local magazines and newspapers.

Know your competitors

Study your competitors, their strengths, and weaknesses. The foremost thing that should be noticed is why competitors are successful and if not, why they are not.

Now take the weapon...your beating point

Be aware about their strengths and there is nothing to do with it. However, study their weaknesses and come up with a great point that beats their weakness. Let’s say your competitor is doing good but charges high price. Now you can make a strategy to charge the lowest price and to make profits by increasing the quantity of purchasing.

Unique value proposition

Coming up with a strategy that beats competitors’ weaknesses would only help in achieving success. To long last in the business, you would need a killing idea that no one has done before, it may be something like the first to introduce in the market.

Take the green concept

Try to fund small amounts to CSR and promote your CSR activities in a cost effective way such as writing articles about your campaigns in free blogs or publish event photos in you Face-book fan page. These two ways can be considered to be the most efficient plus cost effective mean of promoting the concept of Green.The least advice is Never try to imitate big players in the industry. Big players are big players, so you really don't have the ability to bet with them. Just stand where you are, know competitors in your capacity, come up with your own killing idea and keep your customers always delighted.

Your genuine views are appreciated in this blog. You can comment on this post or send personal suggestions to nichecrunch@hotmail.com.

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Religious values denotes a big challenge to market brands

Developing and marketing a successful brand is an absolute challenge for any business in the world. At most instances, why products do fail in certain markets is due to that they are not accepted by people whom are supposed to belong to the target market of that particular brand. In other words, some brands are not even bothered in certain countries though they worth some billion dollars and the reasoning denotes the inability of fulfilling the facts such as legal, religious, cultural, geographical and generic requirements that push a brand towards a need of customization. As just because a brand is selling well in the US market, it doesn’t mean that the same would happen in Middle East or Asia.

Here is the best example. When Pizza Hut was introduced in the Indian market, it ended up with a huge market failure as no one even dreamed before. Later, the market study revealed two main facts as the reasons, which leaded the product to such a market failure. First reason was Beef and the second reason was very unbelievably the name Pizza Hut itself. Since India is a Hindu- dominated country, most of the people didn’t accept the beef in Pizza, which is believed to be a religious harm for Hindus and they didn’t like the name Pizza Hut as that was very unfamiliar to them. Nevertheless, after studying customers’ minds, Pizza came up with a brilliant strategy by customizing the name as ‘Maharajah Buns’ and removed the beef from Burger and introduced chicken and Vegetarian Burgers. Yes, they got it right and captured the market. Pizza Hut’s success over the Cultural and religious reluctance can be considered as an inspiring real life example for anyone who is about to develop a successful brand.

When dealing with cultural and religious value systems, marketers do practice two ways of approaches.
1. Promoting a brand against to any secluded areas of religions or societies and proving what they are doing is right (though the approach is ethical, it still drawbacks in the point where flouting the emotional conceptions of specific people)
2. Promoting and developing a brand that adds values and respect to religions, cultures and individual value systems (Example: animal friendly concept)

Let’s discuss these two approaches with the real examples of how swim-shoot & bikini companies do market their products in Muslim countries. Muslim societies had been remained as far-off and untouched markets for the swim-shoot and the bikini manufactures several years ago. However, some leading companies realized the serious need of reaching these markets providing that these companies had been losing quiet a lot, from what they could have earned from the significant amount of population lived in Middle East with some big bucks to spend. This is the point where Bikini companies started importing some Muslim models from countries such as Indonesia, Pakistan, and Maldives, paid them high amounts for their poses, and promoted those pictures in expensive Medias. This approach did work well with some high-end affluent and fashionable Muslim girls who lived in Non-Islamic countries. Though this approach brought some profits significantly from some segments, it still didn’t convince conservative Muslim societies, and it created a war with those societies and yes, this is what going on everyday in Tele-channels (You can see a Muslim model wearing a bikini and the news about the warnings she received).

Let’s look at the other approach, this is more like not damaging values of any society and accompanying these values with some novel ideas. Very recently, I came across an advertisement that promised ‘the very conservative way of wearing a swim-shoot (the heading), the only brand that respects Islamic values and beliefs. Now you can be fashionable and at the same time conservative (body). In addition, the Advertisement was outlined with a photograph of a woman who was wearing a swim-shoot, which covered her full-body, had a skinny material both in her swim-shoot body as well as in her hat. Therefore, it seemed adding a much Islamic value to the brand and however, here is the questioning on this approach. The fundamental concept behind a swim-shoot is expressing glamour and whoever willing wear it in public (wearing alone is a different story) would bother glamour. So, here do the religious values really matter?

I appreciate your views and you are more than welcome to comment in this blog. You can also send personal suggestions to nichecrunch@hotmail.com
By
Mathangie

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The best suiting leadership style for a small entrepreneur

Anyone who just having a passion to start a business can easily become an entrepreneur providing that the level of entrepreneurship may still depend on facts such as to what extreme one is willing to take risks, the ability of long surviving in the business and so on. However, what the question arises now is that can each entrepreneur become a successful leader? The answer is NO as possibly everyone would accept. Lack of leadership and managerial skills can be considered to be one of the prime reasons for why most of the small entrepreneurs fail in their businesses from the standpoint of creating and long-lasting an efficient work-place.

‘Leadership skill’ is the most important asset to anyone who remain as an entrepreneur and who want to be in future. One may argue on the possibility of being a good leader when a person just got one or two people to work for him/her. At this level, at least that person must have good managerial skills with the ability of making negotiations with the employees and the most specific skills needed here are emotional intelligence and interpersonal dexterity because entrepreneurial (the business owner’s) bargaining is lower than empowermental (employees’) bargaining.

Therefore, now let’s decide which leadership style is much suitable for a small business owner providing task-oriented and employee oriented leadership styles as references. Task oriented leadership simply describes a leader as a control stick who always push employees to do what he wants meanwhile employee oriented leader always would care about the employees’ welfare. However, being hundred percent employee oriented doesn’t sound logic at all for any organization and seems stimulating a doubt on this concept itself. On the other hand, giving much reference to task orientation would seriously irritate the followers (employees) and would result in labour turnover and internal politics. A bargainer (big investor with a large firm) may be hundred percent tasks- oriented or employee oriented while it becomes impossible for a small entrepreneur. I would say, a small entrepreneur must act according to the situation prioritizing 70% to the tasks (make sure the work is done) and caring about the employees (whether they are satisfied with the job) for the rest.

Ken Blanchard and Paul Hersey introduced situational leadership that consists of four general styles of management coaching, directing, delegating, and supporting. Delegating style would be not that suitable for small entrepreneurs since it owes more responsibilities to the employees opposing to the managers (owners). A leader has to select the most suitable management style for him/her from these four; coaching (teaching approach), directing (directing employees what to do& not that effective these days) and supporting (a very friendly approach). At occasions, leadership style is decided by the influential factors such as individual, cultural and perceptual characteristics. Therefore, investing in good leadership skills can be turned into as a valuable asset of the business though it is not required so necessarily in a small business providing that not all good entrepreneurs are good leaders. However, to succeed in a business, one would need to be able to manage people with a sound interpersonal ability at least.

By
Mathangie

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