Don’t Get Eaten – Find Your Own Market.

For those who haven’t already guessed it from the title: Today, we are talking about your market strategy. More specifically, we will be taking a look at the Blue Ocean strategy.

This method was developed and published by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne from INSEAD Business School a few years ago. You may have heard of it before, but very few actually implement it.

What is it about? Well, the theory is that there are two markets: the red and the blue market. Most companies are in the red market, which is characterized by many market participants, strong competition, high entry barriers and is mainly defined by costs or benefits.

What do I mean by costs or benefits? Either you are the price leader or the value you offer to your customers is “better” than the competition’s. Better isn’t really the right word for it – you are the quality leader. This is based on the Michael E. Porter’s theory.

Figuratively, the red ocean is full of sharks, the water is colored by the blood of the struggle for customers.

Moreover, the market is usually dominated by one or a few players. These companies usually already hold a market share of 70-80%. And now you show up and want to get involved in this market?

That’s why, fortunately, we still have the blue ocean.

How do we define a blue ocean?

To stay with the imagery, blue means there is little or no competition. There are not too many other players either, and in the blue ocean, you have the chance to become a shark.

The idea is that you create this market for yourself: your own market, where you are the dominant player. In which you hold a market share as high as the sharks in the red ocean.

Of course, this path – like most paths to happiness – is a little more complicated. The easy way would be to develop a so-called “better” product than the competition and jump into the red ocean.

Good luck with that – I hope you have a life belt ready.

To discover the blue ocean, you need to find your niche!

One way to develop this niche is to divide the market into many small submarkets and then find the appropriate niche you want to fill. If you are in the right market, you can hardly lose, even if your offer isn't top-notch.

Important: The market is always a place, not a person.

Find the place that your customers are in and offer the frustrated to get into that niche.

This way, you get out of the red ocean and customers follow you into your blue ocean, where you are at the top of the food chain.

Let’s sum it up once again:

Categorize the market, divide it into submarkets, take one of these submarkets and find your niche there. Then approach the frustrated customers and offer your solution.

Want an example?

The company Blücher GmbH from Germany. This company looks like one of many that offer activate carbon – a deep red market. That’s what they swam in as well, until a few years ago, when they created their own market and specialized in protective clothing with activate carbon.

They jumped from a highly competitive market into their own, and now? Just look at Blücher’s sales figures. Voila!

Now Blücher is the shark. Own market = market leader

Good luck!

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Not enough?

Connect with me?here on LinkedIn, or check out the?Interius Solutions webpage?and book your personal call with me.

See you soon.

Cheers, Bj?rn