Market approach

The market approach is a tool that we are going to use where we use the information gathered previously, and we estimate the demand for the goods, the most recent sales and then we determine the market space that we are going to occupy. We must keep in mind that it is not possible to attract all customers to our services or products, no matter how attractive they are, we cannot cover the entire market.

Use for example the case of Netflix, a streaming service with hundreds of thousands of options of movies, series and documentaries. Even as massive as this service is, not everyone will like it, there are those who prefer other streaming services such as HBO+, Disney+, or others that also exist in the same market.

The fact that the product can technically be used by anyone does not mean that everyone will be interested in it. This means that in theory if you open a gym, everyone should be attracted to go, since we should be in good shape and take care of our health, but in reality not many would go.

We should not try to be all things to all people, and try to sell to those who do not want our service or product. We should focus on increasing the value of what we offer and attracting our customer segment, and more importantly, making them satisfied so that they will recommend us to others.

Benefits of Market Focus

Growth through focus is the best strategy for new business development. For your growth to be exponential and with true quality, you must initially minimize the products, services and markets you use so that you can be more successful in those specific areas. Here are some of the advantages of the market approach:

• Better availability of resources for greater visibility with depth and breadth and generate demand in our area.

• Generate complete, comprehensive and demonstrable solutions in our segment.

• We will obtain a perception of a trustworthy company, with abundant references, experience and adequate availability of our product or service.

• Gain more customers in our business area.

• More budget to differentiate ourselves from our competitors and surpass them.

Types of Market Approach

There are four main types of market focus, customer focus, production focus, product focus and sales focus, all extremely important. I explain them in more detail below.

Customer focus

In this type of approach we direct our attention to satisfying the needs of the consumer, in which we know their motivations and their assessment of the service. It is the most commonly used today, as it has been shown to produce more results.

Listen to your customer's voice: One of the most important parts of your approach is to know and understand your customers' needs. You must then ask questions to obtain this information. This can be through surveys or satisfaction polls, which help you dig deeper into the customer experience, so you can improve it in the end. If you have a website you can use the comments section as a source of information.

There are online tools that can assist you to this end such as the Net Promoter Score and many more. No matter what type of tool you use, make sure there are enough multiple choice and open-ended questions. Multiple choice questions help you better evaluate the overall customer experience, while open-ended questions allow you to identify specific areas for improvement.

Your survey needs to reflect the full range of customer experience possibilities, both bad and good. To make the data as useful as possible, send surveys to customers who have negative reviews or who cancel or return your products or services; these are often worth more than positive reviews.

Verify the customer's trajectory: It is important to know that only about 4% of dissatisfied customers let the company know about their negative experience, it is also complex to collect information from potential customers who never bought your product or service since it happened in the earliest stages of interaction with your company. To get a better idea of this process try to verify the customer journey from the beginning.

Collect this data with a survey of the whole process, from the moment they found your business, decided to buy what you offer, going through the whole process until they get the final result.

Treat customers with respect: Almost all experts agree that most purchasing decisions are based on emotional rather than rational characteristics. How you treat your customers makes up 70% of their experience, so if you want to improve customer focus you have to treat them with respect all the time.

If the customer feels respected in your company, they will keep doing business with you. It is estimated that if a company has an exceptional customer experience, it can outperform its competitors by up to 8% in the same market. Currently, customer experience is a more important aspect of brand differentiation than price or the product itself.

Focus on production

This approach is the one we use when customers prefer a high demand for our product or service, with massiveness and low prices. In this case we would be starting in a mass market, with scarce supply or unknown market areas.

In this case we would not pay much attention to the quality of our services, but to having a massive offer of these. It is one of the most traditional approaches, but less ethical since you focus more on producing more without taking into account customer satisfaction, which can cost you in the long run.

Focus on the product

In this case the main focus is to concentrate on offering a service or a product with the highest quality standards, which is understood by the intrinsic characteristics of the product itself, not paying attention to the customer's perception of it. A simple example of this approach is in the aviation industry, where companies focus more on manufacturing aircraft with the best possible quality and safety regardless of what customers think. Customers prefer to pay a little more to have these quality guarantees.

Sales approach

Using this approach, you would try to maximize your sales in a short period of time through excessive marketing and sales strategies. Here you can use up-selling, which is nothing more than increasing the price of your products a little to generate a perception of higher quality, and distinguish yourself from the rest of the competition.

This mechanism is essential for the development of any business as it boosts producti