Your market may not know just how much it needs your business. Supercharging your market makes it hyper-aware of your business, its core products, its essential services, and its people. That awareness is how markets are developed, and how sustainable businesses operate for generations.
Supercharging does more than identify market needs; it fulfills those needs, in detail, and provides the validation businesses need to enhance productivity and prove their value.
1. Educate Everyone All the Time
For most of us, the days where professions could be described in a word or two are gone. Industry disruption, constant technological change and information overload have all contributed to the creation of specialists who provide products and services that may not have existed a year ago. Having an elevator pitch – a two-sentence description of what you do and why – is more essential than ever. That introduction is the first step in educating your market about what’s available.
From the elevator pitch, move on to creating other educational tools: Blog entries you can cross-publish to social media like LinkedIn, as well as your own newsletter. It’s also a good idea to create a PowerPoint or Prezi slide about your key points so you have the proper materials ready the next time you’re asked to speak or present in the community.
2. Educate Yourself All the Time
To really supercharge your market, you need to make connections and tap into the power source. That demands businesspeople view every opportunity as a learning opportunity. Listen to the elevator pitch of everyone you meet. Ask questions and concentrate on learning the “why” behind what they do.
It’s not enough to simply identify possible synergies and opportunities to collaborate. You’ve got to listen to learn as much as you can. The people you learn from might move in different markets, but respecting the lessons they have learned – and seeking out the benefits of the lessons they have to teach – is part of the energy exchange that supercharges everything. Self-educators never miss an opportunity to see a presentation, sign up for a newsletter, or create a connection.
3. Segment Your Market
Identifying your market is the first step you took when you started your business. To supercharge that market, you must segment it according to need. Don’t just look at how potential clients differentiate themselves from their competitors; learn how their customers feel connected to their products and services, and how they deal with their partners and suppliers. By segmenting your market according to these behaviours, you can build a profile of what they need to support those behaviours.
4. Identify the Knowledge Gaps
Every industry has knowledge gaps in terms of how information is used in decision-making. What happens when a report is passed to management for review? How do they use that data to identify problems and troubleshoot solutions? For the most part, we don’t know what happens after that data is passed to an executive, or what their response is. That knowledge gap means processes of interpretation and application are largely unexpressed, and therefore outcomes or decisions don’t have meaning for the people tasked with implementing them. Identify the knowledge gaps in your market, and your business will be able to fill them.
5. Identify Under-Served Segments
Segmenting the market identifies the needs that will support your market’s behaviours. Identifying the market’s knowledge gaps tells you how to fill those gaps. Together, these crucial pieces of information help you discover who needs the most help in terms of your products and services. Customers in most need of help represent the under-served segments of your market.
6. Articulate a Process
Once you’ve identified the under-served segments of your market, you can begin to supercharge their place in your business development. Articulate a process for undertaking this development. Who in the organization will undertake what role? How will you position your products and services to address their needs and fill their knowledge gaps? Articulating this process will help your business maintain its productivity while also developing an under-served market that will need more education and attention to become supercharged.
7. Share Your Results
Living in our social media age means nothing is truly accomplished until results are shared. In a supercharged market, information flows freely and benefits from open discussion. Case studies, white papers and even press releases are opportunities to raise the energy level and keep the market buzzing. Sharing successes also validates your processes to the wider community, making them available for study, replication, and testing.
8. Keep Connecting
The supercharged market is an evolving market. Keep connecting with the larger community to ensure new entrants are brought into your circuit and are supercharged for awareness and constant development.
Your products, services, and people are all part of an energy grid fed by education, knowledge, articulated processes, and sharing. The more connections you make, the more market needs are identified and fulfilled. That’s ultimately what it takes to supercharge a market.
Dave Gordon | Contributing Writer
