It might seem like the right thing to do, but blowing one’s own trumpet really hard can often lead to disenfranchised customers and disinterested prospects. After all, it’s not about you is it?

We are taught in business from the very early years , that headline-grabbing figures of growth, size, and market domination are all good things. In fact the City literally demands to know your quarter on quarter performance and woe betide those who underperform. But too easily in this environment, companies can get caught up in the ‘me’ and forget about the ‘you’.

Do your customers really want to be repeatedly told of your success – to be bludgeoned by unrelenting news of your size in the market and how many users or systems you have sold? Or do they really want to hear about how you are going to help them get to the next level; help them to grow and flourish in their particular market? And all the time you are monologuing, you could be missing out on having a dialogue over, say, social media.

This is where talking to your market about their market can set you apart from your competition and from those people who are determined to win the contest about who has the most users or systems sold, or for that matter, bells and whistles on their product or service.

Your customers want to hear that you, 1. Understand their market 2. Understand their problems and 3. Understand their business.

If you can prove these three things then they will sit up and listen. Andhey’ll be positively ecstatic if you can demonstrate that you are proactively pursuing a programme of activity in your product or service that actively addresses the needs that you have shown you understand.

Talking to your market about their market – or Thought Leadership – is where you separate yourself from the gaggle of other suppliers in your space. It is time to stand up and be counted!

A well prepared and executed campaign of thought leadership – relentless thought leadership – will attract the attention of the commentators in your industry also; the journalists and analysts whose job it is to talk to the market about the market. Give these valuable contacts the material they need, making it easy for them by giving it to them in a timely and consumable manner, and you’ll steal the lion’s share of their coverage, getting even more people pointing at you as the perceived market leader. Not because you are biggest – but because you demonstrate you truly understand the market.

Actually, it’s you, not me…

 

By Ashley Carr, Managing Director of Neo PR.

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