Here’s an easy assertion to kick off this blog post, marketing is all about demand. Why? Because one thing that startup marketing teaches you is that you’ve got very little in tangible terms if you don’t have much in the way of demand for your product or service. But I’m not writing this to focus on startups, on using this to help focus regular SME marketing on demand. Why? Because it works. If you have something which your existing customers or potential customers want, then the regular business activity to turn that demand into hard cash follows accordingly.
Of course, with an established business it may not be clear where new demand lies. You already do a great job servicing existing clients with our existing offering, but how do you go beyond that, focusing on demand as your guide? Well, this is a bit of a growth hacking type challenge in my opinion. In the sense that often the answers to growth hacking within an existing business are often connected to existing activity, you’re not trying to make a ‘great leap forward’ more a matter of connecting the dots with what you offer and what customers want. Rather than go into more detail on this theme let me give you an example, which I suspect is what you want to read about (we’re back to demand, see!).
In a marketing role working for an expanding recruitment business MHR London, looking to find new business for their temporary staff offering, I recently undertook some online market research into how the Christmas shopping scene was likely to change over the next few years, drawing on my previous online experience from like of eBay. What I found reading leading industry magazine ‘Shopping Centre’ quoting Patrick O’Brien, principal analyst at Verdict last Christmas, is that:
“Shoppers have greater confidence in online retailing now and are prepared to leave holiday purchases right up until just before Christmas. This is supported by the rise of click & collect services. Retailers have rushed to develop and market their click & collect services, leaving shoppers the convenience of collecting purchases in store instead of having to ensure they are at home at the right time,” he concluded.
Building on this initial analysis I looked for insight which supported the case for the demand-led fact that the pre-Christmas rush is only going to get bigger. Overall UK shoppers’ click and collect grows in popularity (from 35% in 2014 to 76% by 2017) according to retail analysts Planet Retail. This is because from a consumer pov the number one barrier to shopping online is the cost of delivery. Similarly, the Planet Retail research showed that 1 in 4 online shoppers are deterred by inconvenient delivery times.
To conclude this blog post, what I’ve done is put two and two together. Firstly that click and collect services is rapidly growing. Secondly, following confidence in online shopping to deliver the goods, customers are likely to leave collection more and more to the last minute. Which means I’ve putting together the online Christmas shopping behavourial analysis from Verdict, and the click and collect analysis from Planet Retail, I’ve now found a potential niche market for a specific service of the recruitment company worth focusing on. Namely the supply of high quality Christmas temporary staff, backed up by MHR’s expert hiring and support, to shopping centres to ensure the quality and quantity staff to meet the pressures created by the expanding Christmas rush. Merry Xmas!