Understanding Your Market = Sometimes, Small is Good!
I’m sitting in St. Louis as I write this. My husband and I are road-tripping for our summer vacation, exploring the wild variety of sights, tastes and sounds of the Mid-West, along with some great baseball games.
Today we tried something called “St. Louis Style” pizza. If you’re not sure what it is, check it out on Wikipedia. It wasn’t to my taste … but it does help to illustrate an interesting point.
The folks who serve St. Louis pizza understand their market. It’s a uniquely regionalized taste. By keeping it local, they help to keep demand up - tourists come to try it, while locals enjoy the knowledge they have something that is not readily available anywhere else.
In some ways it doesn’t make sense. After all, isn’t business about expanding your markets? But at the same time, I have to wonder if there isn’t something to be said for keeping your market small. With a smaller market, you can tailor your services to provide something special.
My business is a good example. There are plenty of other companies out there that offer formation and maintenance services for very low prices - certainly lower than ours. But I like to think that my business offers something else. Because we’re smaller we can afford to spend more time with each client, and create a specialized plan. We can use our knowledge of both the legal side and the tax side to make sure we present a true solution, instead of stuffing everyone into one of a few pre-packaged plans. It takes longer, but to me, it’s a more complete solution. Yet the way we do business isn’t necessarily suited to a large-scale operation. If we were trying to serve the volume of clients that the larger firms serve, I don’t know if the personal touch would survive. And, like St. Louis style pizza, it’s not for everyone! Some people don’t want or need all of the extra services. Others are new to business and appreciate the attention, while still others could do it themselves, but like the comfort in knowing that it’s all being done for them. I guess for me, at the end of the day, the niche market is the one that works best.
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Niche marketing! According to “The Long Tail” this is the wave of the future. In a discussion over at the Forum, we’ve been exploring the bi-modal curve, which I call the “new Bell curve.” You can sell cheap and you can sell customized with more service. The middle of the market is gone or disappearing. Megan, you’ve stumbled on a fundamental business change in the Information Age that most businesses don’t know yet. Their business revenue is going down and your’s is going up (I know because your tag line of “last week my business had its best month ever” is true.) You are going to continue to have higher and higher record month’s.
Now on to the pizza - those almost look like jalapenos. Are they?
Yes, they were. It’s not the toppings that make a St. Louis pizza … it’s the crust and the cheese.
I was thinking about The Long Tail this morning. In my case it certainly seems true. But I really like the ability to provide the personalized service. That fills a need for me - part of my eCenter™ is being able to give - in this case, information and service.
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Megan Hughes
www.businessfirstformations.com
Last week, my business had its best month ever.
I totally get the ball game part. We have family members who grab games whenever they’re let out of the non-baseball zone.
Not sure I understand why someone would put swiss cheese on a pizza!! Of course, I can scarcely go as avant-garde as pineapple as a pizza topping, so what do I know.