English
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JapaneseOne of my favorite books on acquiring customers is the Blue Ocean Strategy by Kim/Mauborgne. The book explains a necessary strategic shift in focus from competitors to alternatives and from customers to non-customers. I understand it is a strange concept at first, like writing with your opposite hand, but it has proved to be very effective for companies like Southwest Airlines, Cirque de Soleil and Callaway Golf.
Most companies operate with a Red Ocean Strategy where they try to beat their competition on price and exploit current demand. The Blue Ocean Strategy tries to make the competition irrelevant by creating new demand in an untested market. For example, the airlines industry primarily operated in a hub-spoke model. The airline carriers had major hubs across the region and most flights connected through those hubs. Instead of focusing on how to beat the competition’s hub-spoke operation, Southwest focused on an alternative and become a dominant airline by mastering the point-point operation between popular select cities.
Similarly Callaway Golf was losing share to its competitors so instead of focusing on taking customers from its competitors, it shifted its focus to the non-customers. Their focus was on the large population of people who chose not to play golf and explored why that was the case. After their research determined it was the inability to hit the ball, they decided to put a head 2-3x larger than its competitors on the end of the club and called it Big Bertha. It opened up a whole new market and customers to the game of golf and gave their marketshare a boost.
If you really want to be successful in acquiring customers, try Changing Your Lens and take some time to think how the Blue Ocean Strategy may apply to your specific business, and stop trying to win business on price and focus on your value. As I mentioned in a previous post, Price is only an issue when value is absent.
If you need help tapping into a new market of customers for your product/services, please reach out to me.
