Success Through Strategy!

Strategy Matters delivers news, tips and strategies for effective communications through traditional and social media.

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Does Market Share Matter?

The short answer: not always. A simple example will illustrate:

Suppose I open a small restaurant in my local community of 20,000 people. I estimate that of those 20,000, about 3000 represent my "target group" or market. After two years in business, I find that I have served about 10 percent of that target market. Is 10 percent significant market share? No. Do I care? It depends. It depends on:

1) Whether I have the capacity to serve additional share. I may not. In fact, I may be at the limit of my capacity and not willing to invest more in building additional capacity. So, 10 percent market share may be just fine.

2) Whether there are other metrics that may be equally - or potentially more - important to me, like: retention, loyalty, repeat business, etc. If I can capture 100 percent "share of wallet" from 50 percent of my 300 loyal patrons (meaning they are not going anyplace else to eat), for instance, I might be doing just fine.

3) And, related to #2, whether I legitimately feel that my product/service is a "total replacement" for others or simply an alternative. In this example, for instance, I know that diners are likely to choose other options from time to time. That's okay. As long as I'm meeting my goals - whatever they are - market share may simply not matter.

In short, market share may not matter.

The point is that too often businesses, even very large businesses, chase after a metric they've heard about or other businesses follow, but may not be appropriate for them. If I'm focused on a measure like market share, for instance, that focus may make me oblivious to other -- potentially more important -- metrics.

Make sure that the measures you're using to gauge your business success are valid for you. Don't waste time and resources chasing after measures that may not matter.

Recommended Reading:

The Everything Guide to Customer Engagement

Boosting the Effectiveness of Your Employee Communications

It's a constant challenge for many organizations: finding ways to ensure their employees have the information they need not only to do their jobs, but also to boost their engagement and loyalty and to serve as effective brand ambassadors. I was asked recently for my "top tips" on how companies, large and small, can improve their employee communication efforts.

These were my top recommendations:

Think very carefully about the "staging"/order of communications.One of the common missteps I see in internal communication is sending out a broad message (e.g. to all employees) without first informing managers. Those managers are then frustrated because they don't have answers to employee questions and then appear "inept." So, make sure to list all audiences who need to hear the message, and then make sure to stage the message in the proper order, in terms of who needs to know what, when.

Provide consistent talking points in a "media kit" format,which could be delivered electronically to audiences (e.g. managers) who need to inform others about an issue and could include background information: FAQs, PPT slides or other collateral, supporting information, etc. This helps to ensure that a consistent message is being shared across multiple audiences and also helps to support often overburdened managers and other staff charged with communicating these types of messages.

Provide the means for two-way communication to take placeand also a method whereby what is learned can be synthesized, shared and, as appropriate, acted upon. A lot of rich input and information is lost because a) it's not sought in the first place, b) there are no means for those hearing or receiving the information to share it in some formal way, or c) the input is not acted upon. Putting actionable feedback loops in place can go a long way toward ensuring employees' issues, concerns, comments, etc. are effectively addressed.
These are the "big rocks" -- there are, of course, many other considerations that go into ensuring employee communications will help to support a company's efforts. What would you add to the list?

Learn more here.

What You Should Know About Contextualized Content

By now it's become commonplace for most of us. We conduct an online search, view a product on a webpage, and immediately afterward ads are popping up for the same, and similar, products every time we go online, whether we're on our desktop, laptop, tablet, or mobile device. The world of contextualized ads--or ads that are delivered to individuals based on some context--is exploding. Technology is driving the explosion and making possible some seemingly impossible things.

The idea of using location, interests, and other contextual bits of information to serve up content was illustrated quite compellingly as far back as 2011 when Google partnered with four iconic brands--and the creative originators of ads from the 1960s and 1970s-to re-create their ads for a technologically enabled audience. Project Re: Brief was an experiment that teamed these Mad Men-era advertisers with their technology-enabled, 21st-century counterparts to reinvent iconic ads for a new generation.

The results were heavy on contextualized delivery and extremely innovative--highly creative content delivered to individuals based on their settings and even their personal experiences. Today, just a few short years later, what was, at the time, quite revolutionary is now increasingly common.

In fact, technology exists to allow advertisers to get even more "inside the heads" (and devices) of consumers. But, because of the fear of "Big Brother backlash" and a climate where privacy concerns are top-of-mind for consumers, marketers, and regulators, advertisers may not choose to take advantage of those advances.

Those choices can straddle the line between useful and intrusive, of course, and marketers must navigate this terrain carefully. But privacy concerns aren't the only barriers that marketers face.

Despite the massive technological developments that have occurred in the past decade, there are still some hurdles to overcome. There are also massive opportunities to potentially leverage in the quest to break through the clutter to get your marketing message in front of the right people, at the right time and, increasingly, in the right place.

For 21st century marketers that means capitalizing on context, while carefully straddling the line between intrusive and useful.

I wrote a piece on this concept--opportunities and challenges--for EContent Magazine last year that included some interesting insights from experts in the field.