When someone buys laundry detergent for the first time, what do they choose?
Chances are, it’s going to be one of the biggest brands, because they advertise the most heavily. If you don’t know what detergent you’re supposed to buy, you tend to buy the one everyone else seems to be buying.
If you’ve never bought laundry detergent before, you’re probably not going to explore the more niche or speciality brands. That’s too high risk, too confusing, too overwhelming to examine. So you go with the category default.
That’s often true for fast-moving consumer goods, but it also applies to other categories, other products, even services.
When people enter a category for the first time, they do so with velocity.
They’re heading toward the default option in the category, typically the largest brand and the largest advertiser. Because for a brand like that to keep growing, they need to keep expanding the category and bringing more and more people into it.
But our job, as a speciality, focused provider, is usually not to bring more people into the category as a whole.
It’s to divert people entering the category (or who’ve been in it for some time) toward us. In fact, it’s to intercept them before they reach the default option.
The job is to be in the places they go when they go looking for what they need.
And it’s to let them know two things:
- You do the thing they need done
- And you do it in the way they prefer
The first laundry detergent I ever bought was in a bright orange box with a four-letter brand name.
Now, I buy the environmentally-friendly strips that come in a small paper sleeve that I can recycle. Because, on my way to buying my default, I got intercepted by a brand that told me we were aligned on values.
They didn’t convince me to buy detergent, they demonstrated their values to me in their packaging and branding.
So unless you’re the absolute leader in the category, the giant black hole at the centre of the market to which all new entrants are drawn, the job is not to expand the market.
The job is not to explain why people should be buying the type of thing you sell.
It’s to demonstrate the ways in which your company aligns with the values, priorities, and specific needs of those already in the market.
By being in the right place, at the right time, with the right message, when people come looking for what you do.
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