Marketing your Business: Becoming #1

How to be # 1 in your business

It is a misconception to believe that you have to have a better product or service to be number one in your business.  However, if you are number one, people believe that you have the best product or service.

Start a new category

So, how do you become number one without having the best product or service?  The answer is, start a new “category” and be the first in that category.

Tide

When Procter & Gamble introduced Tide many years ago, they could have called the product a “new, improved soap.”  Then, Tide was soap, and Tide is soap today, in the sense that soap is a “cleansing agent.” But Tide was made from synthetic materials rather than the fats and lye found in traditional cleaning products like Ivory, Oxydol, and Rinso.  Tide could have been called a synthetic soap, but that would have nailed the brand to the soap category.  So Procter & Gamble called Tide the “first detergent,” a totally new category and even today, Tide is the leading brand of detergent.

Charles Schwab

When Charles Schwab set up Charles Schwab & Co., he could have focused on providing better service to stock buyers.  But he didn’t. Instead he decided to launch the first discount stock brokerage company, and today Charles Schwab & Co. is one of the leading stock brokerage firms in the country.

Dell Computer

When Michael Dell set up Dell Computer, he could have sold his “better” products through conventional computer stores, but he didn’t.  Instead he launched the first brand of personal computer sold direct by phone.  Today Dell Computer is the world’s largest seller of personal computers and still doesn’t sell any computers through conventional computer stores.

How To Start

Before you launch (or relaunch) a new product or service, ask yourself the following questions:

1. What is the name of the category?  Not a name that you might like, but a name the industry gives the category.
2. What is the brand name of the leader in the category?  Not necessarily the sales leader, but the brand that customers perceive to be the leader.
3. If there is no dominant brand, or at least not a dominant brand in the mind of most prospects, jump right in with your product or service and try to quickly establish your leadership.  Cut prices, cut deals, hire sales people, launch massive publicity campaigns, do everything you can to seize the leadership position before someone else does.
4. Promote your brand as the leading brand.  “It’s so easy to use,” says AOL, “no wonder it is number one.”  Leave no piece of paper or Web site or TV advertisement or radio commercial without mentioning your leadership.  Leadership is the most important aspect of any marketing program. Why?  Prospects assume the better product or service will win in the marketplace.  Therefore, if you are the leader, you must have the better product.
5. If there is a dominant brand, then move on and set up a new category that you can be first in.  But make sure you have a new name to match the new category.  You can get into serious trouble if you try to use an existing name.
6. You can’t dictate the category name.  Only the industry and the media can do that.  Therefore you have to launch your new brand with publicity and get the media to establish the category name for you.

The truth behind marketing

Marketing is not a battle of products.  Marketing is a battle of perceptions.  And to win the battle of perceptions, you have to become the leader in a category.  Prospects assume the leader must be better because “everybody knows the better product or service will win in the marketplace.”  How do you become the leader?  You launch a new category you can be first in.  It doesn’t have to be a big technological advance.  Sometimes the simple ideas are the easiest to get into the mind. And where do you win the battle of the marketing battle?  You win the battle inside the mind of the prospect.