How to build success when already market leaders

More innovation!

This doesn’t necessarily mean creating something brand new but rather thinking laterally. Now that you’ve established your presence in your core markets, is there an opportunity to enter new international markets that weren’t previously reachable? Or now that you have a healthy bottom line, could you invest in tweaks to an existing product line that could open the door to an additional customer segment?

Many businesses fail after their initial breakthrough because they stop innovating. We’ve all heard of once great companies, like Blockbuster and Blackberry, which have been superseded by competitors because they failed to keep up with changing customer needs and didn’t adapt quickly enough.

Keeping on top of market changes and staying ahead of competitors are key to maintaining your market-leading position. Internally, embracing new technologies can also play an important role in streamlining processes to become more efficient and increase profit margins.

Talking to your customers provides endless learnings. Understanding their pain points and tracking how these change over time will enable you to hone your offering and adapt your messaging and approach to continue to attract new customers.

Marketing plays a pivotal role in staying abreast of trends. Ongoing research and analysis should be a core part of any marketing programme; buyer habits change and therefore you need to keep adapting and evolving your strategy to stay relevant.

The Ansoff Matrix, developed by Igor Ansoff in 1965, is a useful tool to adopt when determining what strategy should be next in your pursuit of growth and weighing each up alongside the associated risk.

Given you’re market leaders, you have most likely exhausted the opportunity within the market penetration quadrant and are now considering the other three strategies.

Developing a new product, or service, for an established and engaged customer base could be the next area to pursue. You already have a good understanding of your audience’s needs and motivations and no doubt a pool of loyal customers willing to test new solutions and provide constructive feedback to help refine these.

On the flip side, market development could be a quicker route to success, taking your proven product or service to new markets, such as a different geographic location or an untapped audience demographic.

If you’ve already exhausted these two paths, diversification could be your next direction of travel. While there’s more risk involved in departing from an established product in a familiar market, opening up a new channel will require continued innovation, ensuring your continued growth.

Even when top of your game, with innovation embedded in your organisation, there will be avenues to pursue to open up new revenue streams. The key is not standing still but continuously hunting these opportunities down and quickly turning market changes to your advantage.

If you’re looking for an experienced partner to help you strategise as you move into new markets, get in contact with our MD, Hayden.