Posted with permission from Greg Linder.
BBB Marketing Takeaway
By Greg Linder, MBA
What’s Your Sandbox?
Ok, so the mushroom cloud is disappearing, and the populous is starting to peek their heads out of the bunker to see if the only survivors of a nuclear explosion really are roaches, Twinkies, and Keith Richards. What they are actually starting to find is a slow and cautious economic recovery.
What do you do now? You’ve survived to this point, but your not in business to just eek out an existence. 2010 has a lot of promise for a return to some semblance of normalcy, so now you need to figure out how to exploit that.
The first thing to do is assess your current situation. Figure out where you are and how you got there. Are you still on track with your original mission? Have you fulfilled your original mission and need to figure out how to move forward through expansion of products or services?
When I was a kid, my cousin had the coolest sandbox on the planet! It had to have taken up 3 acres. Well…it seemed that way to a 4 year old anyway. In all reality it was most likely on 5 or 10 feet square. (Why the heck are you talking about sandboxes, Greg?!?) Simple! We’re all in a sandbox! Your market is in the sandbox that you play in. Your sandbox is your industry. So…how big is your sandbox? How many other kids are trying to play in your sandbox?
The internet has made many kids sandboxes WAY bigger. The best part about a bigger sandbox is that there is way more room to build forts and castles (products and services for customers). Just like the game, Monopoly, the more forts and castles you own the better, right? (I don’t think that your game of Monopoly actually had forts and castles, but it sounds pretty sweet compared to houses and hotels! Whatever floats your boat works, though. There are several ABs who like houses and hotels.)
The worst part about a bigger sandbox, though, is twofold. First off, all those other kids have dreams of real estate development as well. Second, the neighborhood cats might leave some surprises (negative word-of-mouth/loudly dissatisfied customers) in the vast and hard to control wilderness of the bigger sandboxes. (Dealing with and preventing those surprises will be covered later.)
Do you know exactly what sandbox you’re in and how many other kids are in it? Determining your industry seems like an easy task. However, when you consider the substitutes for you and what you do or sell, it might get complicated.
For instance, a heating and air conditioning company might say that their industry is HVAC installation and repair. What are the substitutes, though? When its cold and someone’s heater isn’t working properly, are they always going to call a heating and air conditioning company? Not necessarily. When its hot outside and the A/C isn’t working, are they going to always call a heating and air conditioning company? Not necessarily.
Consumers might choose a space heater or box fan from Wal-Mart. They might go buy an extra jacket at Target. They might get a window A/C unit at Lowe’s. What reasons do your potential customers have to NOT come to you? Those are your substitutes! Even the silly ideas might be worth looking at. A substitute for fixing a “check engine soon” light might be getting a new car. It sounds silly, but how many times have people unhooked the battery cables to reset the engine light before taking it to the dealership to get a better price? Silly…but it happens.
Figuring out the substitutes for you and your service can sometimes be the best way to really figure out what industry you’re in and who you’re up against. The heating and air conditioner repair company from above might actually be in an industry more precisely referred to as interior climate comfort (or something…I just made that up, but you know what I mean.)
After you get through that, you can start to work on improving your marketing footprint. Your marketing footprint is how big an impact your marketing has in your industry. How many people do you reach, and how well do you reach them? Where are they? (on your street or in your city, region, state, country, Kazakhstan, etc…)
Your assignment for this month is to write down your industry and substitutes. Seriously, write it down! Move about halfway down the page and write in what your marketing footprint is. How do you advertise? What channels? (billboard, online, phonebook, newspaper, etc…) How many people are reached by your ads? Count hits on your website. Ask the newspaper how many issues are in circulation. What’s the traffic count on your billboards? Are you targeting the people who want a fort or castle in your sandbox?
Now move to the bottom quarter of the page and write in what your competition’s marketing footprint is. Do they have a bigger or smaller footprint? How big is their sandbox? What do they do different? What can you do to provide a better fort or castle than them?
Well…how big is your sandbox, and how many other kids are playing in it? Do they build better forts or castles than you or do they just leave a bigger and better footprint in your sand? Treat your customers right, and you might keep some of the neighborhood cats out of the claim you’ve staked in your sandbox.
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