When you learn how to tap into an uncontested market space, particularly a rapidly growing demographic with unique needs and preferences, everything about your business changes.

Create your niche path

Every business springs out from a niche market need, and defining your niche market is critical. The most successful businesses are those that find and satisfy the needs of a specific market. Remember, it’s not everyone that wants or will want the product or service that you offer.

Whatever market you choose to serve must be large enough to sustain the business and give room for growth, and niched enough to make you narrow down the focus. It’s more like not focusing too blurrily on the forest or too minutely on any particular leaf.

And when you get a market advantage with your superior product or service that is targeted to a well-defined market, exploit it to the fullest without looking back.

So, start by doing thorough research to find a profitable niche market, and understanding who is in that market and what they want before stepping out to give them exactly what they want.

If your product can’t find its target market, or your market can’t find your product, your business will fail from the start.

Gregory A. Moore in his book, Crossing The Chasm taught, ‘Cross the chasm by targeting a very specific niche market where you can dominate from the outset, drive your competitors out of that market niche, and then use it as a base for broader operations.

Trying to cross the chasm without taking a niche market approach is like trying to light a fire without kindling.’ That says it all. In niches are the market riches.

Raise your game

Raise your game in your blue ocean is not negotiable. There will always be those who will come to challenge your newfound domain. What determines if you win in any game is not how good you are; it is how good you are relative to your competition.

It is so important to know your own strengths and weaknesses in this market that you have some inherent advantages. One thing you need to do is to play in the areas where you are strong and have a differential advantage.

James Clear in his book, Atomic Habits taught, “A good player works hard to win the game everyone else is playing. A great player creates a new game that favours their strengths and avoids their weaknesses.” It’s foolish to believe you can win a game if you allow others to control the play.

You should raise your game above what is there in your market or industry. How big is your market pie, and how much of it can you bite?

How much of the market can you capture and own based on your marketing capacity, skills, and capabilities? To win in this competitive game, you need to concentrate all your energy and resources on your chosen market space, and give it your best!

When you have found your market, continuously keep your eyes on what that market desires and expectations.

Demonstrate to your blue ocean that you care about how your offering would serve them better than the competition. When you find your blue ocean, you will redefine your business success, and make the competition irrelevant.

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About the author

Tony Ajah is a Business Growth Strategist, and the author of BUSINESS SENSE, and ON BECOMING AN ENTREPRENEUR. He maintains a personal blog, where he shares proven business ideas and principles for SMEs.

Enterprises create their blue ocean by going where the profits and growth are and the competition aren’t.

What is a blue ocean?

The blue ocean denotes all the unknown market space that are untainted by competition. In this space, the market demand is captured, or created rather than fought over.

In this ocean, businesses have wider and deeper potential to be found in unexplored market territory with many opportunities for growth that are both rapid and profitable.

The concept of the blue ocean was made popular by Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne in their books, Blue Ocean Shift and Blue Ocean Strategy. As you know, the blue ocean is the opposite of the red ocean, where the majority of businesses bloodily slogging it out.

At the red ocean, businesses compete in existing market space, exploit existing demand, and look for ways to beat the competition. It takes more energy to contest in the red ocean than in the blue ocean. You can’t win big in business fighting with so much competition.

Reduce the competition

Today, forward-thinking businesses are embracing and tapping from great riches in the market by standing out.

You must align the whole system of your enterprise activities in pursuit of differentiation. Don’t just try to be better, try to be different.

Being different is the key to making a difference in the marketplace. It is important that you streamline your business to a point of differentiation.

This will help you to know who your target customers are and what to do to attract and keep them.

Whenever you come up with a business idea or solution, watch closely who shows up and why. Bill those who show up and keep your eyes focused on why they came. Rather than competing in games where you’re an underdog, find unexplored new markets in which you can win and make the competition irrelevant.

‘The secret of most successful start-ups’, someone said, ‘is the ability to hit a bull’s-eye-to aim with exquisite specificity.’ This is like finding the right market. Finding the right market means finding a starving crowd.

Eliminate the unnecessary

Which of your business operations or activities should you eliminate? Your product or service is not for everybody. If you get turned down, chances are you haven’t found your market, and maybe you are approaching the wrong people.

The generalist is weak; the specialists are strong. ‘When you try to be all things to all people’ Al Ries a marketing guru taught, ‘you inevitably wind up in trouble.’ There’s also an old saying that: I’d rather be strong somewhere than be weak everywhere.

Your business doesn’t need everyone in the marketplace; it only needs a segment of the market who find your offering highly valuable and can’t live without you. When you find such people, serve them better than anyone else could. By giving attention to a specific group, you achieve a very high market share in that category.

People should know what your business stands for and what it doesn’t stand for. When you stand out from the crowd, real men would run to your roof with treasures in their hands. Therefore, if you are not positioning your solution as a high-value-adding creator to a specific market, you are simply out of step.

…to be continued

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