Becoming the Market Leader: Using Topics to Stay Fresh

As John C Maxwell once said, ‘a leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way’.

But how do you find the right path to take – how do you know the ‘way’?

Becoming the market leader in an already saturated market can be extremely difficult, and breaking free from the pack can seem like an impossible task.

That’s why it is essential you know your industry inside out. You need to be able to place your marketing strategy into context with what is around you.

Public Perception

Before becoming the market leader, you must first learn how the public defines one.

Isolating the key topics of conversation that surround your brand as well as your competitors will allow you to establish where you fit in your market’s landscape.

Brands need to learn that they cannot be all things to all people.

Specializing in a specific niche and owning it completely will see your product become the go-to choice for consumers.

Owning Your Niche

Social data can inform brands what their customers believe are their key strengths.

It can shed light on new areas of interest and confirm whether established advertising is being reflected in consumer opinion.

Take a look at the chart above on topic mentions for different toothpaste brands.

It has been divided into key categories that have been mentioned in relation to the products.

Crest sits at the forefront of social conversation and is the leader on the topic of ‘Whiteness’ – FRESH.

They are the market leader.

As a brand that has multiple products advocating pearly white smiles, it is testament to Crest that they are highly associated with the topic.

It demonstrates that their advertising and brand message is working on their target audience.

The data also identifies Crest’s biggest competitor in this topic, Colgate.

Knowing the competition’s strengths and weaknesses will allow for companies to strive in areas that have previously been overlooked.

Smaller Conversations

But it can be the smaller conversations that make the biggest impact for a brand.

Looking at the toothpaste graph we can see that Crest dominates the topic of ‘Health’.

Although a much smaller area of conversation than ‘Whiteness’, Crest has created a dominance in conversation that sparkles the competition into submission.

This tells us that this is an area that Crest could focus on to increase the volume of the discussion and association with their brand.

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In contrast, Colgate is the leader in the conversation of ‘Sensitivity’ with Sensodyne just slightly behind.

Crest has hardly any influence in this topic area, despite having products in their range that cater for sensitive teeth.

Crest will need to work harder to raise awareness of their brand in relation to sensitive toothpaste.

By understanding the topics that resonate with a target audience brands can effectively construct a marketing plan to tackle any areas they may be lacking in. It may be that a brand is the leader of a particular niche, rather than the whole industry.

Conversations online can pack a mighty punch in helping you to become a market leader. But there are a so many more amazing things that can be done with SMM!

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