Owning your market means that whenever anyone in your target audience thinks of a product or service, they think of you. If you want a new smartphone, you think of Apple. If you want to do an internet search, you think of Google. You want stone crabs; you think Joe’s. Owning your market doesn’t mean that you do it best. It doesn’t even mean you’re the biggest. Instead, it means you’ve laid claim to the mental real estate in your target audience’s heads. For most organizations, this involves narrowing your offerings so that you become the “first” or “only” organization to provide precisely the thing you provide.

What steps does one take to own the market?

I.          Start In a Blue Ocean

Blue Ocean refers to the book “Blue Ocean Strategy” by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne (AMAZON). In that book, a blue ocean has not been explored yet. The metaphor points to the idea that companies and organizations that find a small segment within their respective markets can own those niche markets. Owning the niche then allows your organization to expand, with impunity, to adjacent markets. Here’s an example. In Trenton, NJ, there are thousands of pizza parlors. Most of them are fantastic. But when it comes to bar pies – a particular type of pizza – JoJo’s Tavern is the best. Nobody does it better. JoJo’s does not own the pizza market in Trenton. Instead, they own the bar pie market in Trenton. And because they own the bar pie market in Trenton, they also sell a ton of chicken parmigiana.

II.         Be The Expert

Part of owning the niche is becoming the expert in that specific area. You can’t fake this with cool social media posts. You must learn more about your niche than anybody else in that market. So, if you’re going to adopt this strategy, you had better be passionate about it. For instance, if you live in Colorado, there are many people you can talk to about getting a mortgage, but you can’t find anyone more knowledgeable than Matt Lee at Bank of England Mortgage. He’s the guy you talk to when you want the absolute best rate, when you are self-employed, when it’s your second house or an investment property, or when there’s anything about your mortgage or financing that may be even remotely complicated.

III.        Find or Create Opportunities to Demonstrate Your Expertise

Even after you’ve found your niche and become the expert, none of that matters if nobody knows about it. So you’ll want to find ways to flex your knowledge, demonstrating that, in this specific area, you are the person to come to. The best place to start this process is your website. Providing clear, easily understandable information about your product or service – even if the people coming to your site end up going with your competition – will help you hone your messaging and ensure you are the expert. You can then leverage the information on your website to garner outside speaking opportunities and even public relations hits on stories that may apply to your niche.

IV.        Always Give A Call To Action

Now that you’re giving away all the incredible knowledge you have acquired about your niche, you will want to ensure people know how to find you if they’re going to buy your product or service. So first, tell them precisely what you do and what they can expect, and then, if the information is being given somewhere other than your shop or your website, provide them with a way to get in touch.

At The M Network, we work alongside CEOs, non-profit organizations, government entities, politicians, and high-profile individuals as trustworthy advocates in helping them define and elevate their roles within the market. We work through their communication objectives to discover the best messages for reaching their audience. Our goal is always to build a sustainable communications infrastructure that will transform our clients’ messages into effective long-term communications that can catapult them into taking ownership of their market.