There are some subtle, low-cost and very effective ways to make sure you get noticed.
When you have a small company and you are in an industry with large established competitors it is hard to be noticed. The conventional approach to marketing is to spend money on advertising, web site development and sales materials in order to have your products known and to educate potential customers.
But what if you are growing rapidly and cash is needed to pay for new staff, infrastructure and accommodation. This is where a marketing approach called ‘finger on the trigger’ can help.
A guerrilla approach to marketing gets others to do your marketing for you. You leverage your time rather than your money and use your contacts within the media, your industry association and the local community to establish a reputation.
One of the most effective promotion paths you can take is to have the industry market analysts get behind you to establish your credentials with your prospective customer. Almost every industry has some form of ranking which establishes the best companies within their sector along with a number of attributes.
While you may be too small to be listed in the most profitable, largest exporter category and so on, aim for the ones where you can be successful at that will influence buyers, such as, most innovative, most promising young company and so on.
My former software business used this technique to establish ourselves as an ‘industry leader’ and ‘innovator’ when we were one of the smallest companies in the emerging supply chain optimisation software market.
We identified the top three market analyst firms and arranged to spend time discussing our products and development plans with them. Each of these firms provided industry briefings and product and company rankings to investment brokers, but the same reports were used by corporations investigating products to buy. Our first task was simply to arrange to be reviewed by them and establish ourselves in their ranking.
In order to move up the ranking, we needed to convince them that we were worthy of their attention. We did this in two ways. We kept them informed of any major sales we made which indicated that we had a competitive product against larger and more established competitors.
The most important part of the strategy, however, was to show them that we had listened to their advice and implemented their suggestions. Once the new functionality had been implemented or we had implemented their advice on other matters such as positioning, pricing and so on, we would make a return visit to show them that we had followed their suggestions.
The impact was remarkable. Instead of being a second or third tier player, we were being referred to as innovative and competitive. A key part of our strategy was to ask for their help to identify a niche market in which we could establish a dominant position. Even if this was a very small part of the overall market, the objective was to establish ourselves in the analyst’s mind as the best in that niche.
Once established, this positioning allowed us to be listed as an ‘industry leader’. The trap the market analyst firm fell into was that they could not turn around and say we had our positioning and functionality wrong since we had followed their advice. They now had their finger on the trigger.
The key to guerrilla marketing is to work out what kind of advice prospects use to evaluate purchases and then influence the source of that information. To the extent that you can positively influence the market recommendations, you effectively alter your prospects’ perception of your worth.
In our case the market analysts were critical. They reviewed all the products in the market, provided an opinion on their functionality and fitness for solving customers’ problems and predicted their future market share. Companies establishing a short list of products to review would often use the analyst ranking.
We also found that an independent review of our products against the competition was worth the time and, sometimes, the consulting fee. Understanding where you can gain an additional competitive edge is important when allocating limited product development funds.
Also you might be informed about competitor product development plans and thus identify which markets to avoid. Being ranked as a market leader by the analysts was a key factor in our final exit. I am sure that the corporation which acquired us found it easier to justify the significant premium they paid for our business because we had been independently ranked as a market leader.
In most markets there are market research organisations, consultants or journalists who influence user preferences. You should get to know them, seek their advice and implement their suggestions where it is cost effective to do so. Then of course you do need to let them know that you have done so. Now you have their finger on the trigger.
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