Monthly Archives: September 2019

Use Events to Raise Market Awareness Together

Two weeks ago I wrote about collaborating to raise awareness of your market and last week, opportunities to research your market with competitors.  This post looks at events, practical things to try with competitors, to raise awareness of the problem you solve.

Meetings and Conferences

To enrol people to an event, is an effective way to find and educate a market.  Advertise it as a training event or opportunity to find out more about the problem and potential solutions.  If you collaborate, you have a ready pool of potential trainers and speakers.

The main problem is financial and time costs.  The biggest cost is promoting the event and ensuring people sign up and turn out for it.  This is particularly difficult where your market isn’t aware of the problem.

Collaboration saves on costs, the reason many events fail.  It’s also an opportunity to pool ideas and extend networks.

If your event aims to raise awareness, it’s not a good idea to sell direct at the event.  It’s an opportunity to begin relationships that in time lead to sales.  Agree to share a database of contacts or ask people who are interested to sign up with you direct. 

Networking

Whilst training events bring people together while generating income, they are not always the best option.  Aim for regular contact to get to know your market.  Networking events allow regular attenders to build relationships over time. 

Collaboration means you share leadership activities.  You share the work to keep track of members, keep them informed and find speakers and activities. 

It’s interesting most network meetings are generic.   Is it worth trying themed networks?  Could you network around marketing, building capacity, finance, financial management, sales or social media?  Build a network of competitors while other businesses pass through as they seek help with your speciality. 

Social Media

Social media is better for raising awareness than it is for sales.  When you plough your own furrow, you move people from support for your thing on social media to your email list.  So, why do few businesses collaborate on social media?

For example, a Facebook Group about some problem might draw attention, especially if supported by several businesses.  They each contribute from their unique perspective and encourage members of the group to contact them, join their lists or attend their meetings. 

Conventional Media

If you share a conference, network or social media point of contact, then promoting it through conventional media is possible.  An article, radio or TV item that promotes the joint work may be effective. 

Conventional media is time limited.  This is less true of online media.  So, you need something people can respond to straight away, somewhere they can go to find out more.  The big advantage is you are likely to reach people who don’t access social media.  Work out how to draw them into your network once they make contact.

Which leads us to the next topic.  Once you raise awareness of the problem, how do you help people understand there are solutions? 

Research Your Market and its Needs Together

Research is underexplored for collaboration.  There are several reasons.  Research is likely to be costly in time and money.  Collaboration means sharing such costs.  Persuading competitors to invest may be difficult. But there is a lot to do together at minimal or no cost.

Another reason is belief in keeping your research from your competitors.  But confidentiality may not be so important for research into your market and its needs.  Knowledge of your market’s needs allows you to develop your own response to them.

What to Research

Here are two areas for research.  There are other opportunities for research collaboration but these two seem fundamental and I see little reason not to share these costs.

First, research into your market.  Who are they?  Where can we find them?  Their habits and worldviews.  Many business owners are vague about their market and so good quality information is really valuable.  The more you know about your market, the more likely you are to find a niche that positions your business away from your competitors.

The second area is needs analysis.  What is a need?  Define what is ideal for your market.  What do they want?  Then compare the ideal with reality, as your market experiences it.  What do they need to move from reality towards the ideal?  The market defines the ideal, while you offer what they need.  What assistance do they need?

Comparing Notes

It is possible the research you need is already in the public domain.  It may need interpretation and gaps may need filling but why spend time actively researching when you can meet your needs through desk work?

Get together with competitors and compare notes.  What do you need to know and what do you already know?  Go beyond assertions based on belief.  Does anyone have evidence?  As you talk, take note of the main areas where you need research or to verify information. 

Then give everyone a topic and ask them to research it online.  Meet later to share results.  Then decide whether you need further research.

Surveys and Questionnaires

This is perhaps the easiest research to do together.  Use an application such as Survey Monkey.  It helps if someone among you knows about survey design.  Also consider the time to devote to analysing responses.  Tick box answers are fairly easy to collate.  Answers in prose take much longer!

Ask your lists to answer the survey.  Each business mails their own list.  You may have social media options too.  This is an effective way to get reasonably reliable results, if you all put the survey in front of relevant people.

Analysis of results takes far longer than you think.   If someone volunteers, consider paying.  The results may be immensely valuable to all concerned but getting them into a usable format is a chore.

Research Projects

Finally, ask someone to do research for you.  The drawback here is costs.  However, if you have pooled knowledge and know what you need, investing in professional research may not be so daunting.  I don’t expect most small businesses follow this route but with collaboration and shared costs it may be realistic for a few businesses who wouldn’t otherwise consider it.

If you collaborate over deepening understanding of your market, then there may be scope for further collaboration for marketing.  Next time I’ll look at how to pool resources for marketing to prospects who are not aware of their problem.

Raising Awareness: Creating a Market

This is the third post in my sequence about collaboration. Last time I suggested that collaboration between competitors can be rewarding. This post, about raising awareness, is based on the first rung of the Awareness Ladder.  Remember, the lower the rung on the ladder, the harder it is to move to the next rung.

If your market has no idea it has the problem, your task is to persuade them they do in fact have it.

Your Differences Don’t Matter

If your prospects don’t know they have the problem your business solves, it doesn’t matter what your solution is.  Your prospects don’t care about your solution or your competitors’ solutions because they don’t recognise the problem as theirs.

This makes raising awareness together mutually beneficial.  Any business offering solutions to a problem most people don’t believe they have, faces an uphill struggle.  Why should anyone believe you?

Furthermore, if you do persuade someone they have the problem, what’s to stop them looking around for a solution elsewhere and finding a competitor? 

Collaboration therefore means you can work together to find creative approaches to explaining the problem without fearing you’re going to lose out to your competitors.

An Example

I used to be obese.  To look at me now, you would find it hard to believe! 

I didn’t think I had a problem.  My image of an obese person was someone of gargantuan proportions.  I was clinically obese, which means I met the clinical definition of obesity. 

Did it matter?  Yes it did.  I told myself it was encroaching old age that led to my lack of energy.  I had high blood pressure and developed Type II Diabetes.  It was that diagnosis that led to me accepting I had a problem and seeking a solution. The fact that I did not acknowledge the problem cost me my health.

I lost about one third of my body weight, once I understood I had a problem and took it seriously. 

If you had a solution to the problem of obesity, how would you persuade obese people they have the problem? They won’t buy if they don’t see the benefit.

Similar difficulties face people who sell financial advice, prepare wills, life insurance, trusts, etc.  Many people need these businesses to solve a problem they are not aware of.  The problem is real, the problem is lack of awareness.

Raising Awareness for Mutual Benefit

Whenever I promote my business and especially the problem it solves, I benefit other people in similar businesses to mine.  Similarly when they raise awareness of similar issues, I may benefit from their marketing.

Ah, yes you may be thinking.  If you promote your own solution at the same time as you raise awareness of the problem, then surely you have an advantage?  Perhaps that is true but remember, the next step on the Awareness Ladder is to increase awareness that the problem can be solved.  And then people don’t always buy solely on the quality of the solution.

I shall address these steps in future posts but there are other possibilities for collaboration at this bottom rung of the Awareness Ladder and I’ll cover these first and so next time I explore “Research”.

Collaboration Between Competitors

Last time, I wrote about collaboration between businesses that are very different.  Such collaboration seems safe but the benefits are likely minimal.  It’s always worth exploring collaboration with businesses that deliver something a long way from your offer; it’s always possible you’ll stumble on something viable.  But your competitors, those with offers uncomfortably close to yours, may offer greater opportunities for collaboration.

Competition

One big untruth about business is, businesses have competitors.  This belief leads to competition and divides businesses that otherwise benefit from collaboration.

If two businesses have similar aims, there are more opportunities for collaboration.  Successful businesses collaborate.  There are stories of cutthroat competition but mostly successful business owners see opportunities for collaboration with close competitors. 

I’ll explore this in more detail in future posts in this sequence.  But at this stage, understand there are opportunities at every stage in your sales funnel, from raising awareness of the problem you both address through to joint ventures.  

Positioning

Positioning is key to understanding collaboration between similar businesses.  Say you’re a business coach.  You have common interest with other coaches in increasing awareness of the advantages of business coaching generally.  Indeed, if you cannot find any competition, what evidence do you have that you have a market?  Opportunities for collaboration correlate with market size.

Look at it this way.  If you want to increase public confidence in business coaching generally, then you need to make sure you match prospects with the best coach to meet their needs.  A poor match might discredit the coach and also the principle of business coaching.  The better you know your competitors, the more likely you’ll guide prospects to the best match for them.

The challenge is to find ways to help prospects decide between you and your competitors. Everyone benefits if they make good decisions.

How to Position Your Business

Of these, the problem you solve is most likely common ground.  Competitors understand the problem in different ways or use different solutions.  I explore this in detail next week.