How to stand out in the marketplace of ideas?

Authored by Aniketh Jain, General Manager APAC - Enterprise Cloud Business.

If you’re an entrepreneur, you must have number of skills to be successful the most important of which is marketing. Naturally without marketing your business won’t attract customers and without customers your business is unlikely to be successful. While marketing is a broad subject and at times demands a subtle understanding, the few techniques below reveal why it is critical for entrepreneurs.   

Articulate Your Brand’s Value Proposition

Every product that is successful offers something of value to consumers, but even products that don’t add any real value can at times be successful if they are marketed skillfully. A skilled marketer must be able to sell ice to the Eskimos. We want to emphasise that marketing can make even a mediocre product very attractive by allowing customers to perceive additional value in it. If you’re an entrepreneur selling a challenging product perhaps you need to re-imagine your product and re position it. This could be crucial to your success as an entrepreneur. Marketing techniques will give you insights to do so.  

Clearly, a high-quality product sold under an established label is easier to sell than one that is unknown to the public. As an entrepreneur, the brand you're marketing is probably one the consumer is less familiar with. Attracting customers to your brand will demand creatively on your part. You will need to understand how to position your product vis-à-vis the competition. Even when your product is identical to that of your competitors, clever marketing can differentiate it.

Remember, the vast majority of products don’t sell because they’re of exceptional quality; rather they sell because they’re marketed exceptionally well. Luxury cars sell at a high premium because those marketing them have positioned them such that hundreds of millions who want them can’t afford them. This bestows a remarkably high status on those who own such cars. Pricing a product out of the reach of the vast majority of people creates demand for it among those who can afford it. Of course, it's not just that simple otherwise any product could be a success just by virtue of being overpriced.

If you want your brand to be successful you must create around it a perception that surpasses the product or services utility. Luxury products do this well which is why they can charge a premium. Those skilled in marketing can articulate their brand's value proposition to consumers. Every entrepreneur must be able to do so as well.

Marketing Grants Insights into Consumer Behaviour

If marketing is to be successful sophisticated techniques that grant subtle insights into consumer behaviour must often be employed. Very few if any products sell simply on their own merits. Rather consumers must be persuaded to buy them; meaning entrepreneurs must understand what drives consumers. As an entrepreneur, you must understand what kind of product your consumers are looking for and deliver a product or service that meets their requirements. This is where skill in marketing comes into play. For instance, focus groups and surveys will allow you to understand beforehand what kind of products consumers want or whether there is demand for a product or service at all. This is crucial for you as an entrepreneur because it reveals prevailing consumer sentiment in a market allowing you to tweak your value proposition or rethink whether to enter a market in the first place.

Understanding the Competition

Marketing allows entrepreneurs to understand their competition using a SWOT analysis. Every incumbent in an industry will have a larger market share than a new entrant. It’s difficult for a new entrant to make a dent in a crowded market without understanding its competition. After SWOT analysis, you as an entrepreneur will realise what your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats are. You will also understand your competitions, for instance, you will likely learn which brands products are perceived to be high-quality, but expensive or which brands products are perceived to be of standard quality but suffer from the perception of providing a poor support network. A SWOT analysis, a crucial marketing tool will reveal this. When you spot weaknesses in your competitor’s products you can create a marketing campaign that emphasises the advantages of your products compared to your competitors.  

The modern marketing canvas is extremely vast, exciting, and continuously evolving. The formulation of new techniques and strategies that allow products to reach newer markets is always on the anvil. If you’re an entrepreneur you simply must be an outstanding marketer so you can articulate your brand's value, gain insights into your consumer's worldview, and understand your competition.

About the Author 

Aniketh Jain is the General Manager APAC - Enterprise Cloud Business, one of the largest cloud-based enterprise messaging and communications companies in India. Aniketh handles marketing and product ideation to the enhancement of cloud-based messaging and voice platform and ensured that Kaleyra’s growth was not only rapid but also sustainable. He does it all with élan. His passion and commitment to deliver value to clients by building a customer focused service organization is infectious across the company.  His decision-making abilities and creative thinking make him distinctive.

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