How To Corner The Market

Cornering the market means positioning yourself as the go-to in your specialism and becoming the obvious choice. The one who gets it and the one who delivers. You don't have to dominate the entire industry or appeal to the masses, what it means is to be the known, trusted and tried and tested person and that when someone needs what you do, they think of you immediately. It means your clients will trust your process and respect your work and your time.

What does this mean in real life for real businesses? Well how about the hairdresser in your community that understands Asian hair, how to bleach it and how to take it from black or dark brown to platinum blonde? What about the hairdresser who specialises in curly hair textures? They become the go-to name in their communities because they serve the right people and they serve the right people well. They've cornered that market. What about the mentors or the coaches that understand neurodivergent clients? They understand flexible meeting times, last minute cancellations and no shame around executive dysfunction.

Cornering a market means cornering a space, your space. It means that clearly, you understand your audience and you understand what you do. You understand and can help solve their pain points. The work doesn't actually feel like work because you love what you do and you love the clients.

My audience doesn't really care about buzzwords like SEO or PPC or SEM. What they care about is that they know that they need marketing, it feels overwhelming and like just too much of a thing to think about, they're looking to attract the 'right' audience and they're receiving views with little to no engagement. It's why sharing their stories is so important and marketing done well tells us about what someone is about, why they do what they do, what their day-in-the-life looks look, they want to relate to you. People want to buy from other people. More so from people who just get it. Less so from a machine that's going to guess wrong and get it wrong and eventually create more work for the user.

Cornering a market means that you're not trying to be everything for everyone or trying to forge your way in other people's path. They key to sustainability is that it's a space in a shape that fits you. Your people are out there and they're likely looking for what you're offering, they just don't know you exist yet. And that's exciting because the right marketing will help people find what they already need.

The best thing that you can do to be everyone's obvious choice is to know your shit. Know your value. Know your audience. And if you don't know, you can always ask. You might not know it but marketing is a dialogue. It's a conversation that you're listening to just as much as you're speaking. You're adapting to responses and you're growing as your audience grows. And once you know that and implement it into your business practices, that's when you start to corner your market.