In today’s challenging economy, jobseekers are finding it hard to look for a job that suits their qualifications with the salary they want. Limited numbers of opportunities are available to countless people looking for jobs.
Career counselors are advising jobseekers to separate themselves from the pack. They are asked to highlight their strengths and the possible contributions they can give their prospective employers during the interview process. These career counselors are also saying that jobseekers need to stick to a certain position where their technical skills and behavioral strengths can be most utilized. Jobseekers will have greater chances of success of being hired by simply doing this.
Why would it be any different for companies who are marketing their products to the public?
In order to increase their profitability, companies must need to focus on a certain niche; to solve a particular problem for a specific set of customers. Focusing on the mainstream market forces companies to lower prices to effectively compete with others. However, chances of gaining market share and brand recognition are mostly slim since there are well entrenched brands that have stuck to the minds of people.
When I was growing up, we used to buy our bread in local bakeries. They served freshly baked pan de sal (literally, salted bread) which is slightly larger than a golf ball. People from our community bought pan de sal from that bakery. People were forming queues to be able to buy freshly baked pan de sal every morning, until 8am.
After a couple months, Pan de Manila, opened a shop outside of the village. The shop was few minutes drive from the entrance of our community. However, people who used to buy bread from the local baker were now buying from Pan de Manila. It didn’t matter that the price of pan de sal was almost three times the cost of the bread from the local bakery.
What Pan de Manila did was to separate itself from the local bakers and target a different niche. If you notice, the local bakery and Pan de Manila are both serving pan de sal. The local bakery, however, stopped selling pan de sal at around 8am. Pan de Manila serves fresh from the oven pan de sal 24/7.
Pan de Manila differentiated itself from local bakeries by focusing on two things; fresh from the oven hot pan de sal any time, any day and by using wood to bake pan de sal. The result is that they are able to charge a premium and people will go out of their way to buy different kinds of bread from them.
They have maintained a loyal customer base that keeps on buying bread from them. Pan de Manila has impressed upon them what they are buying a fresh quality breads.
