Tool Box
Issue No. 30 - August/September 2006
Find clients you didnt know you had
by Dr David Corkindale and Dr David Corkindale
In today’s competitive markets it is very easy to be sucked into the situation where to gain business we try to lure customers or clients from our rivals by offering more value.
However, this value comes at a cost to us and, in the end, can be ruinous not only to us but to all in the industry. Then, only the large and powerful survive.
When companies’ strategies are focused on finding this so-called competitive advantage over immediate rivals it is often short-lived, even they can achieve one at all.
We are all aware that in many manufactured goods industries there is overcapacity in the world and the Chinese seem to be able to supply many things more cheaply compared to us. It is said Chinese-made cars may sell in Australia for $8000 in a few years' time.
Rather than get embroiled in viciously competitive markets it would be better to find a whole new set of customers and where there are few, if any, competitors.
Some companies have done this to their great benefit. How do they do it?
Target Non-customers
Critics of typical company marketers say that they focus too tightly on established customers in the market. They assume that anyone not in the market is available. Maybe they are — if the right things are offered in the right way.
Just think, gyms used to be dour places where only boxers and bodybuilders went. Now look at them!
There are three types of non-customers.
An example of the benefit of targeting the first type can be said to be the runaway success of Yellow Tail wines in the US. Without any above-the-line marketing Yello Tail became the number-one-selling wine brand in the US: 7.5 million cases in 2005, and this from a brand that no one had heard of in 2001! Casella Wines, who make it, are said to pay a higher price per tonne for grapes and account for 15% of the national grape consumption, so Australia benefits from their efforts.
Casella was able to char...
