We often ask to ourselves why a business can become so dominant in the market. The most obvious answer is probably because they dominate the advertising and overpower the competition, through higher frequency and quality of their advertising material. However, some local businesses are able to dominate the market using more simple advertising messages that include prices of various brands and models of their products. They publish fewer, but larger advertising messages that still provide enough room for other information, such as name, telephone number and address.
While they don’t spend much money for advertising efforts, they could be the only seller that provides more comprehensive information about their product. Since they can’t dominate with the most frequent ads, they could dominate the market by offering the biggest ad. As their sales continue to increase, these companies would improve the frequency of their ads and they will be available in more locations.
After they establish relative domination in local newspapers, they start to venture on local TV and radio stations. They eventually become the most dominant advertiser on these three mediums. Soon, they could become the largest dealers in the county or state as they steadily expand their influence in more advertising channels.
Market domination is often considered synonymous with market share and in many cases, this is true. But we could always see that businesses start to become more dominant once they try to dominate the local advertising mediums, not the other way around.
Businesses should also consider two other mediums, the Internet and Yellow Pages. These platforms also provide us with additional exposure to potential customers in the market. If a business is still unable to obtain better physical location due to budget consideration, it is still possible for them to compensate by advertising and selling their products through the Internet.
When looking at the Internet, it is all about traffic. Instead of expecting pedestrians to pass our storefront, we could expect web audience to visit our webpages. Yellow Pages is also about traffic, but it is eye traffic to be precise. Just like with other printed advertising, we should be able to provide better designs and layout.
Like with physical stores, locations are also important when we seek to advertise through Yellow Pages and the Internet. We will get a better response by having a better location. In Yellow Pages, plumbing companies should always advertise in plumbers category, not other related but less suitable categories, such as sewer cleaners and water heaters. This will help us to optimize our audience through the use of proper keyword.
This obviously applies for Internet and it is much more likely for consumers to click companies listed in the first page of search engine results. However, achieving this can be rather difficult because many competing companies are also seeking to get to the top positions. We may need to hire online marketing professionals to gain better results in Internet. It would be useless to construct a website worth$10,000, if we are unable to reach good positions, even for our local market.