Establishing Your Enterprise in the Marketplace

If you are going to create a new enterprise that simply emulates a well-established business, you are, at worst, likely to fail and, at best, be gobbled up by the competition.

To target your market niche, talk to potential customers, competitors, and suppliers. Ponder to yourself and/or ask the following questions:

• What’s next. What technology advancement is coming soon and can you get ahead of the curve?
• Fix something that bugs you. If your business can fix a problem for your customers, they’ll thank you for it.
• Apply your skills to an entirely new field. Many businesses and industries do things one way because that’s the way they’ve always been done. In those cases, a fresh set of eyes from a new perspective can make all the difference.
• Use the better, cheaper, faster approach. Do you have a business idea that isn’t completely new? If so, think about the current offerings and focus on how you can create something better, cheaper, or faster.

Do the necessary market research, solicit feedback, and brace yourself for how brutal and discouraging the data may be. This is no time to be thin-skinned. Remember, no matter how great a new idea is, if no one is motivated to buy it at the price you have to sell it for to make a profit, you don’t have a business.

-Vince DiCecco, Your Personal Business Trainer

New to marketing? Here are the basics to the conventional approach.