Increasing market penetration for domination

There is a known fact that it is not the best product that sells, but that which is constantly put before the consumer and always available does.

To achieve this feat, it is pertinent for companies to

get their supply and value chain right. This line of thought presupposes that the goods or services entice or add value to the customer.

Some companies have used this system to stand out in their spheres. For example, in the Fast Moving Consumer Goods – food and detergent sector – some brands have been very dominant, that consumers mistake their brand name as the name of other competing products or brands within the same category.

While growing up, there was a particular noodles brand I thought was the name for all kinds of noodles (I am sure, you know the brand I am referring to). Companies who have been able to use this strategy have led their sectors, such that even when their products are not readily available in the market, customers are constrained to wait till it arrives and view other products as inferior. These companies frequently get more purchases than their competitors and record more sales.

Companies like Coca-Cola and other market leaders have been able to dominate their sector by following some principles like:

Think long term

Companies looking to dominate their sectors must always think long-term and build short-term steps to reach their goals. As tempting as it is to take shortcuts to gain market penetration, these shortcuts usually shorten the long-term growth of businesses. It takes a lot of discipline, focus and patience to gain ground. At the early stages of inception, many companies have increased prices prematurely, in a bid to boost profit while at risk of losing buyers with lower incomes. Building a company and achieving market domination is a marathon and not a hundred metres dash.

Etch their products into consumers’ minds

Companies that have been able to penetrate their market have developed all sorts of channels to latch on their products into their consumers’ minds. A company like Coca-Cola prominently displays its products in pictures and stands in restaurants and cafeterias, with pictures of coke with various mouthwatering dishes and people relishing the dishes.  This paints a mental image in the customers’ subconscious that a meal is incomplete without a bottle of coke to wash down. In addition to this, they ensure their products are readily available at such outlets with different merchandising materials. Their products are found in almost every store and street corner; this ensures their products are not in short supply at any outlet.

Smart companies let their brands tell stories, by creating messages that will reach the largest amount of consumers. To gain top of mind awareness, they create distinctive and attractive messages to draw the customer in; letting the customer know more about the brand; the problem it solves; what it does and why they cannot do without it. They are consistent, repetitive and painstaking in their message delivery to engage their customers who have limited attention span.

There is a perfume dealer I follow on social media. I love the way she cultivates her audience in her trade. She starts the morning by greeting them and telling them about perfumes that go with different moods; she  livens the Twitter sphere with some pictures and generally educates her audience about perfumery to go with occasions. She does delivery and offers free samples.

Whenever I need a perfume, I sure know where to turn to. The amount of requests she gets from her patrons is quite impressive.

The right product portfolio

A certain market leader at a time introduced various products into its portfolio to increase its market share and dominance. One of the products introduced was a bottle of Chapman. The product was dead on arrival to the market scene; this is because Chapman is perceived as a bespoke drink made fresh and served at occasions, not bottled with preservatives and served. The consumer market punishes such slip ups. It didn’t take long before the product was abandoned due to poor sales in relation to other product lines.

Having too many products within a product line most times creates more harm than good, as the successful products have to cater for the production costs of the less successful ones. Getting the product mix right is a delicate and careful balance, which the company has to get right.

To increase market penetration, market leaders  also ensure their trade terms deliver the best value and mileage for them, by pushing their products through the value chain to ensure the consumers have their products at the right place and at the right time.
They also engage in promotional activities to ensure they attract new customers. One of the premium market leaders in the milk sector had to bend over and create smaller sachets to satisfy the needs of customers who it had earlier lost, who could not afford the bigger tins.

Ambitious growth plans

Companies that lead in their sector know that getting to number one could be the easy part; however the hardest part is sustaining the lead. Take a look at your local supermarket shelf, numerous brands everyday competing and positioning for the customers wallet, attrition levels are high on some product lines, hence market leader sales and growth plans are usually ambitious to account for losses.

For these companies, there is still a lot of room for growth and market domination. To achieve this, many of the companies go outside their target market to seek for new business and more acquisitions to account for a plateau in the demand for their products.

Brand penetration is vital to market domination for fast moving consumer goods and other product categories, this fact cannot be over emphasised.