3 ways to LEAD

This is an extract from the first of my posts as one of the "Growth Leaders" on the Marketing Society's blog I've been invited to do.

If you want to
make money it’s better to be a leader. Being a leader can mean being the outright market leader, such as
Tesco in UK supermarkets. But it doesn’t have to. There are different
ways to be a leader brand, and we’ll look at three here: leading in a
price segment, leading on a consumer need and leading in a channel.

Leading a price segment: Apple is a brand often
portrayed as being a niche player in PCs, having a paltry 7% market
share. However, dig deeper and you find a different story. Apple has an
amazing 90% share of US PCs sold over $1000. It has made a strategic
choice to focus on the high-end of computing, where people are looking
for design, performance and ease of use, and are ready to pay for these
benefits.

Leading on a consumer need: We saw in an earlier post that although Coke is clearly the
overall UK market leader in cola, Pepsi leads on the need for low
calorie cola with “bloke appeal”, with Pepsi Max. Pepsi Max
has a 10.2% share of the total market. Coke challenged with Coke
Zero, but despite spending £22.7 million on marketing since launch, it
has only managed to get a 2.2% share.

Leading in channel: the “route to the consumer” is
one of the biggest challenges facing marketers, given the power now
held by the major retailers. This is why leading in a channel is a
great way to lead. The Fristi brand of yoghurt drink for kids in Holland has strong competition in the supermarkets, but is the clear leader in out-of-home. This leadership depends on a complex
network of contacts and contracts built up over many years, and so is hard for any challenger to
attack.

It pays to be a leader brand. But being a leader doesn’t have to be
the biggest, it means being the best in your chosen field of
competition.