Sometimes all it takes is to look outside your business and take notice of what potential positive changes are happening in your market.
Once you have done this you need to decide whether these changes could become opportunities for your business and customers. After this step, you are then in a position to select the best opportunities, develop your marekting strategies and put them into action.
Opportunities to look for within your market can be broken down into:
Product or Service: for example, improvements, innovations, new product or service development
Target Market: such as, target market growth, expansion into new segments of the market, new or changing customer needs or wants.
Purchase Rates/Buying Habits: for example, changes in average transaction size, buying frequency or growth of a distribution channel.
Pricing: for example, the move away from regular discounting by competitors
Market: such as, a market experiencing growth or moving away from being just a seasonal market.
Market Share: for example an opportunity to steal share from existing competitors
Competition: such as decreasing number of competitors
Business Relationships: for example, new business relationships identified
Customer Service: such as, growing customer demand for high quality or after hours customer service.
Distribution: for example, the number of distribution channels expanding or new distribution channel emerging
Geography: such as, competitors reducing their presence in states or even countries
Technological Factors: for example, new technology allowing more convenient ways of purchasing for customers, or new technology to increase communication with customers
Economic factors: for example, strengthening of the currency or the economy
Government factors: such as, changes to government, changes to national or state legislation or taxation rulings
Just by taking advantage of the positive changes that are occurring or are likely to occur in your market over the next year before your competitors do could represent real growth for your business.
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