Targeting Your Market

Your market position can make you or break you. A quick look at the market dynamic between the three big discount department store chains, Wal-mart, K-mart and Target will give you a compelling example of how leveraging your market positioning can either ensure your continued growth or spell your demise. In going up against the proverbial 100 pound gorilla that is Wal-mart, Target an K-mart took two different approaches that had equally different results. While Target directed their brand image efforts in establishing themselves as a more hip and upscale company than Wal-mart, K-mart continued a business as usual non-strategy that had them competing head on with the market dominant Wal-mart and competing for the same customers. K-mart drug out the fight, but failing to reinvent itself, K-mart ultimately had to throw in the towel. The lesson here is that, if you can’t beat them at their own game, you should change the game, or at least your position on the playing field.

As a small business or a start up entrepreneur you aren’t going to be able to compete with the big boys who have been in business for decades and established a strong brand name. That doesn’t mean you can’t position yourself in a way that will let you flourish and grow so that you’ll one day be big enough to deliver that knock out punch.

There are a wide range of print advertising methods you can employ to establish your name as a breath of fresh air in a tired market of chain stores. For the sake of brevity, though, lets narrow our focus down to color poster printing. The principles that apply to your poster printing can be carried over to other print marketing mediums and posters themselves are a great start to marketing due to their low cost, ease of distribution and versatility.

The first thing you’ll have to establish is where you’re competition stands. Its handy to grab a pen and paper and actually write down all of your competitors, listing their strengths, weakness and how they are positioning themselves with their own marketing. Once you have a fairly complete list, you can begin to look for your niche in the market. Don’t limit yourself, either. Its easy to look at a market in overly simplistic terms like high end, mid-range and low end. A market can just as easily be broken down into social groups or age brackets, too. Try to look at the market from a few different angles. The beauty of this is that you don’t have to limit yourself to one group as long as they aren’t contradictory groups. You can even create custom posters for each group and distribute them accordingly.

If you can’t differentiate your business based on a market niche, you’re going to have to find some real advantage to sell yourself, like a unique product or a service the other guys can’t or won’t offer. Obviously, this is more difficult and leave the opportunity for the competition to mimic your offer or, worse, undercut you with a cheaper offer.

Ideally, you should aim for both a unique product and a unique market appeal, but this isn’t always possible. K-mart was able to establish themselves for a while with the blue light special gimmick, but in the end, once that got stale, there wasn’t enough to separate them from their main competitor in the eyes of consumers. The important thing is to get consumers to identify your company with a certain lifestyle or aesthetic. Also, don’t let yourself get in a rut like K-mart did. You can reposition yourself in a market if you find your current situation isn’t working. Target did just that in the early 90’s with great success. Learn a lesson from them and keep yourself from being the next K-mart.

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