Joshua MacLeod:

To bring a product to the market, especially in a competitive marketplace, you had better have a competitive advantage – doing something better than somebody else, a convenience advantage – doing something more convenient than anybody else, and/or a consistency advantage – being more consistent with your product and delivery than anybody else.

So if I’m not bringing those three things to the market, then I’m not really going to be able to gain market share. If I do bring those three things to the market – if I’m more competitive, if I’m more consistent, if I’m more convenient, then there is a good chance that I will gain market share.

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Welcome to the Growability podcast, teaching business and nonprofit leaders a more excellent way to run a business. Visit Growability.com for your leadership, coaching consultation and business collaboration needs.

This is the seventh episode in our series about Selling Without Being Fake. In this episode, we talk about what a market is, and the three critical components of building market share.

Here are your hosts, Joshua MacLeod, and Bernie Anderson.

Bernie Anderson:

Speaking of all of these things like Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn and all of this stuff that we just talked about, that really leads into kind of our topic for today, actually. We’ve been talking for the last several weeks about how to do sales without being fake.

I know it would be helpful for me and hopefully it would be helpful to anybody listening to us today. What is the difference between sales and marketing? What’s market share and how do you get market share? And what are some of the tools that we use for marketing? What are the best tools to use for marketing? Should we just use Facebook and that’s it? What are the mistakes that people make when they start marketing?

So there you have it. Go.

Joshua MacLeod:

First, we’ve got to define what a market is. So a market is a group of people in a location who purchase a product or service.

So let’s say I want to define an ice cream market for Nashville. So the big question is how many people in Nashville are ice cream consumers.

Let’s say that 80% of people in Nashville buy ice cream. So now what I have is I have a market. That, if I’ve got a million people in Nashville, 800,000 of them would represent the ice cream market. These are the 80% of the people in Nashville that buy ice cream.

So now that 800,000 that’s the size of my market, but now I’ve got to ask the question, "Okay, where do those people buy ice cream?" So I look at that 800,000 people and I say, okay, well, "Half of that market buys ice cream from a grocery store. So now I have the grocery store market for ice cream and Nashville is 400,000 people."

The other half is split between standalone ice cream shops and restaurants. And this is obviously not accurate, but let’s just say.

I’ve got 800,000 people. That’s my market that’s the amount of people in a location that purchase a good or service. Half of them are grocery store purchases, 25% are standalone shops like your Ben and Jerry’s or your Baskin Robbins or your Jeni’s Ice Cream if you’re in Nashville, and then the other 25%, we’ll just call it restaurant and miscellaneous.

Let’s say that I am Turkey Hill. So, Turkey Hill is a brand of ice cream. My market share would represent the amount of the entire ice cream buying population that buys ice cream from me.

So if I’m Turkey Hill and I have 20% of that ice cream market, and I want to gain market share, then I’m going to have to figure out how to get people to buy more Turkey Hill ice cream and not buy Ben and Jerry’s, and not buy Breyers or Kroger brand or any other kind of ice cream. I want them to buy more ice cream for me.

So what I’m doing then is I’m increasing my market share if I can get more people to buy from me. So back to your original question, "What is marketing?"

Marketing is bringing your product to the market and then doing your best to gain market share. So you bring your product to the market and then you work as hard as you can to get people to buy more of your product from you than they go to the other person.

Marketing proceeds sales. What marketing does is marketing makes sales easier.

If I show up and I say, "Hey, I represent Bob’s Ice Cream." And I’ve never heard of Bob’s Ice Cream at all. And I go to BobsIceCream.com and there’s no website there, and the guy doesn’t have a business card that says, Bob’s Ice Cream and there’s no phone number for Bob’s Ice Cream, then there’s no chance that anybody is actually going to buy anything from Bob’s Ice Cream.

In order for Bob to get his ice cream sold, he has to do marketing. He has to create a platform that will present his product or service in the market.

So in our day and age, you know, that means a website, that means a business card, that means I’m bringing who I am – the story of what we do – I’m bringing that to the market.

If I have really good marketing, then it makes my sales easy.

Bernie Anderson:

Let’s think about this for a minute then. So, marketing precedes sales.

Joshua MacLeod:

Yup.

Bernie Anderson:

Increasing sales is ultimately how you increase market share, but how do you do that? How do you increase market share? You’re Bob’s ice cream.

Joshua MacLeod:

Yeah.

Bernie Anderson:

Bob’s Ice Cream has no market, share. How do you gain market share, when you don’t have what you feel like to be enough?

Joshua MacLeod:

Okay. So let me start with what marketingis not.

Marketing is not "fake it till you make it." Marketing is not saying that you can do something that you can’t actually do.

Bernie Anderson:

I’m delighted to hear that because I hate fake it till you make it. I despise that.

Joshua MacLeod:

Well, I mean, you know, in all reality, "fake it till you make it" means you’re a faker. Nobody wants to be a faker. "Fake it till you make it" is not cool.

Once you are not faking it, there’s three things that allow a product to come to market.

Number one is a competitive advantage. What is it that you can do that is something that, if somebody tries to copy, they’re not going to be able to do it?

So let’s say I have a peach orchard. And the peaches that are on my orchard are the very best peaches that have ever been made. And I put those peaches in my ice cream.

So I’ve got Bob’s Peach Flavored Ice Cream. The peaches from my orchard tastes better than any other peaches. Somebody else can try to copy that, but I’ve got this particular soil. I’ve got this particular, thing that makes it hard for anybody to copy. I have a competitive advantage.

Bernie Anderson:

Or if Bob says I have a secret ingredient in my peach ice cream?

You know, we actually mixed, like, we’re not going to tell you what that secret ingredient is. We have Bob’s Secret Recipe Peach Ice Cream with peaches from this orchard. That means nobody’s going to be able to do the same thing.

Joshua MacLeod:

Secret ingredient. I don’t know what it is, but man, when you taste that ice cream, you’re like, "Mmm. There’s something about this peach ice cream that’s just great."

So one way to gain market share, or even to bring a product to the market is to have a competitive advantage. The second. Is to have a convenience advantage.

What if Bob says, "You know what? Going to the grocery store for ice cream is just too difficult. We have, all of our ice cream is dropped off by drone to your doorstep within 10 minutes."

You know, I go to Bobs.com. I put in my cell phone number, ’cause I don’t want to have to type in my address. You know, it makes it even easier. And then I click the button and then in 10 minutes, a drone drops off Bob’s Ice Cream on my porch.

If you can figure out…

Bernie Anderson:

And we’re giving away this business model for free for anyone who wants to start their own ice cream business, where it’s like GPS. You could be anywhere in the country and get a drone. Drop you in dropping off ice cream to you. What a great business. I like, I’m there for it.

Joshua MacLeod:

And it’s funny, we joke about that now, but like, you know, five years ago, who would have thought, look, you click on anything and it’s at your doorstep in two days? And Amazon has totally covered that.

So, one way is you have this competitive advantages, this unique thing that only you can do another is a convenience advantage. It’s easier for your customer to get your product or service from you then from all of your competitors. And then the third thing is the consistency advantage.

So the consistency advantage, which is every single pint or gallon of Bob’s Ice Cream tastes exactly the same.

You know, sometimes.

This is the worst thing:

you get that ice cream, and it’s a fudge swirl ice cream. And sometime you get it, and man, it’s got the fudge swirl. It’s perfect. The other time you get it, and like 90% of it is just vanilla ice cream. It missed the swirl in this ice cream bar.

So like I’m serious, like fudge swirl ice cream when it’s got the perfect swirl in it, it’s perfect. But fudge swirl ice cream, when it is missing the swirl is the worst thing in the world. I’m not gonna I order that fudge swirl ice cream anymore.

So in the same way, your product, when you bring it to the market, are you able to be ridiculously consistent every time that you offer your product and service?

So to bring a product to the market, especially in a competitive marketplace, you had better have a competitive advantage – doing something better than somebody else, a convenience advantage – doing something more convenient than anybody else, and/or a consistency advantage – being more consistent with your product and delivery than anybody else.

So if I’m not bringing those three things to the market, then I’m not really going to be able to gain market share. If I do bring those three things to the market.

If I’m more competitive, if I’m more consistent, if I’m more convenient, then there is a good chance that I will gain market share.

Bernie Anderson:

As I think about this, I think about things like product development. So you’re at the front stages. You have this idea for a new shoe company. And you’ve got, like, these shoes that you’re going to sell online or whatever, and so often people start with thinking about, "Oh I need a website. I need a, I need, let’s get a logo together. Let’s, you know, social media account set up. I’m going to do all that."

Marketing doesn’t start there with those tools.

Joshua MacLeod:

That’s right.

Bernie Anderson:

Marketing starts with making sure that your product has a competitive, convenience, consistency advantage over all of the other people that are going to be in the same marketplace that you are.

So,

Joshua MacLeod:

That’s exactly right.

Bernie Anderson:

Really spending time working hard, strategically thinking through your competitive, convenience, and consistency advantage, innovating that, getting, like, brainstorms going on how this is going to happen seems to me like the most strategic way to begin thinking about your marketing.

Joshua MacLeod:

Yeah. That’s exactly right. So that would be the roots of the tree. If marketing is the tree, the roots of that tree are, "How do we provide a competitive advantage? How do we provide a convenience advantage? How do we provide a consistency advantage?"

Now what marketing is, is actually presenting the competitive advantage that you have, the convenience advantage you have ,the consistency advantage that you have – actually presenting that to the market.

That’s why I like to say that marketing is bringing who you are to the market.

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Thank you for listening to the Growability podcast. The mission of Growability is to equip leaders to flourish in their life and work by developing vision, rhythm, and community. To discover if there is a more excellent way to run your business, visit Growability.com and speak with a certified Growability coach.

Bernie and Joshua are also available for speaking engagements, workshops and conferences.

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