Market Leader is the Best Positioning

When business owners think about the phrase “market leader,” they often envision everyone but themselves.

Many North American business entrepreneurs are too modest, not realizing that they could actually become the market leader in their sector. And those who lead the market last longer — and earn more profit. There’s nothing wrong or impossible about being a market leader. You just happen to be the the most relevant and the best.

There’s a wise group of owners, managers and entrepreneurs who know there’s no time to waste in building market leadership. It begins with the right business model, well funded marketing and promotion, and a strong marketing strategy.

Do it Well, and There will be little Costly Warfare with Competitors

And leading and taking marketshare doesn’t mean having to do battle in the marketplace. Because powerful strategy builds strong brand preference and nullifies competition. A unique presence and offer means there is no competition. It’s the ulitmate business strategy.

And strong digital marketing dominates awareness online and gets your unique, inimitable and preferred brand across. Just going for number one, will draw everything in your business upward. Smart entrepreneurs know this.

Consider Google’s success. They launched the same year I came into SEO and Content Strategy. I met one of the Cofounders in Dallas in 1998. I liked Google and enjoyed visiting them in Mountainview for business in 2005. From the start, Page and Brin wanted to be market leaders.

They never competed with Yahoo, Altavista, Lycos, Excite or MSN. They just launched a great service the way users wanted and kept adding value via reliability, better results, and no gimmicks. They had a definite passion for their business startup which launched trust which the others didn’t. The others vanished.

Market Leading Growth

In any market whether travel or housing, leads and sales are finite unless you are built to grow. Market leaders get to control their growth — from a position of strength. They get to go past low hanging fruit to pick the juiciest most nutritious fruit where no else can reach.

If being number one is too much to ask, then being one of the top 5 isn’t. Either way, you’ve had a taste of sales success and you’re ready to build your business through 2024, and the next 5 years.

Today the topic is why becoming the market leader is so advantageous — a position of strength that is more stable and profitable. It’s a place where your staff too are more confident, loyal and able to relax. It’s hard for anyone to feel good when they’re uncertain about the company’s future.

Originally, this article was written specifically for Realtors, but it’s a good read for travel agency and tour company owners as well as SaaS software service companies. A view of another industry, helps you lower guard and see the topic more objectively.

Key Advantages of Being a Market Leader

Brand Recognition: you build an “only one for me” brand attraction that makes competitors disappear
Competitive Advantage: you set the standards for your market which helps your establish preference for your products/services
Customer Loyalty: customers trust your brand’s quality and innovation, leading to repeat sales.
More Data: collecting more high quality data regarding performance and customer preferences
Increased Sales & Revenue: More traffic, visibility, and leads generates more profit — the purpose of a business
Attract Top Talent: your company is more more attractive to skilled employees and staff feel more confident in their employment
Greater Support for your Business: you’ll gain more business partners and brand ambassadors because they want to associate with the best. And you’ll attract investor who absolutely want to invest in #1.

Strong Marketing Builds Preferred Status

When sellers ask “should I sell my home” you want to be the one providing the answer. In fact, for whatever questions they’re asking, you want to be their preferred Realtor. You can do this real estate marketing thing so well in fact, that they will have a strong preference for you — and to them, you are your brand image. Choosing someone else seems almost sacrilegious if you become “the only one for them.”

That’s what real estate branding is all about. It’s not to elevate a weak image, it’s to build a powerful preference (in the foreground, top of mind) that makes competitors fade away into the background fog. then, there is no one else — just you.

Before you get them to that moment of decision about who to hire, you’ll need to gain visibility, relevance, trust, and conviction (VRTC).

There are plenty of real estate marketing agencies (and travel companies) selling slick, designed packages, but they’re often empty sales shells. Yet, they don’t generate a personal commitment to you. Just a sales and marketing template with standard services that offers weak differentiation. Sure it looks good, but it’s like ice cream, all sugary with no nutrition. You must have a solution for you, not to fulfill a marketing service company’s revenue goals.

To create trusted and desired status, we have to get real with a solid, unique value offer. And the voice of your brand and offer has to be authentic. So slick and standard don’t really work well. As long as your presentation is clean, focused, well expressed and credible, your unique presence can shine through. It’s this unique human connection that creates high quality, long lasting customers. It’s where they really know you and trust you. It’s trust that’s being marketed. People trust market leaders.

Focus on the heart of it first and work on the exterior afterward. Design is easy, building real value isn’t.

Truly Empowering Your Marketing

Whether you plan to leverage free organic media channels or use fully paid approaches, your content must have a sincerity to it. That’s a big part of relevance, credibility and trust. If home buyers and sellers feel your content is too shallow or slick, they won’t trust it. It gives off signals of lower value.

It’s the same if your content is too rough, not on topic, or lacks panache. The point of effective website and social media content is in hitting on the factors relevant to your your targeted audience.

You don’t have to appeal to every prospect, in fact, you can’t. By focusing on one group, you may alienate others. You’ll be giving up something less for something much more — your ideal client.

These people will be more eager to work with you, much more loyal to you and the long term payoff will be excellent.

Right now, then you should be looking at a quality real estate marketing package to ensure it can give you the broad, persistent exposure to your targeted clientele. Google, Facebook, YouTube, and selected real estate publishers should be your go to lead sources.

Follow These 6 Basic steps:

Create an Ideal, Perfect Brand Experience — Sell the perfect solution to your most ideal customers and ensure your UVP is crystal clear and easy to understand. Certainty is a big part of trust.
Build a Strong Brand Patiently – a calm, wise, patient approach to make your name synonymous with excellence, confidence, and positivity. Your brand will provide a lasting reputation for providing the buy/sell experience they expect. And clients can’t wait to meet you in person.
Excellent Content + Strong Visibility = Strong Traffic Flow – Google traffic plus valued, engaging content makes you their go to resource online. They become informed, feel more focused, more aware, and more confident of following through with their buy/sell decision with you.
Visibility and Omnipresence – why are brand advertisers so persistent? They know impressions add up to create top of mind awareness. They keep pushing the unique value proposition until you decide to buy. As with Coca Cola, McDonalds, Ford, Viator, Gadventures, Marriott Hotels, or Starbucks, omnipresence generates big success. Google, Bing, Facebook, Twitter, Realtor.com, Zillow, and other portals give you broad, deep connections to your target market.
Relevance, Credibility and Trust – These 3 come as a package deal. Buyers and sellers don’t trust you unless you’re relevant to them and you’ve made your offer credible. In a sense, they want to hire their vision of the perfect provider. You’re their market leader.
Creating Decisiveness – They are aware of you, respect you, and want to become your customer but something is stopping them from pulling the trigger. Be the one who addresses their pain points, in a voice they feel good about, and to reassure them that your brand is the only one they need consider.

Your Website Content

Your web content embodies all of these channels, objectives, strategy and steps, making the process seem natural to them. Your analytics solution will monitor this process (sales funnel touchpoints) and help us improve it so we capture all possible client prospects. Right now, you might be losing 98% of good customers leads.

Whether you’re in software, real estate or the travel business, finding a versatile marketer who understands brand values, strategic marketing, content excellence, and being spirited in well funded marketing is critically important.

The opportunity to be a market leader is always present if you choose it. It’s only our own limitations that stop us.

Contact Gord at 416 998 6246 to discover how I might fit in well with your project.