What are Market Challenger Strategies?

The Market Challenger Strategies are various strategies and marketing techniquesadopted by business associates, firms, and organizations to attack their respective competitors’ occupying a larger share in the market. Either a start-up or an established company, you only have two options in business: one to flow with the waves of the ongoing business and the other to launch challenging attacks for your competitors. What option would you opt for? Flow with the waves or launch an attack? Of course, majority of you would go with the option of launching an attack and aggressively work towards expanding your market share and earning high revenues.

Frontal Attack

“Dudh si safedi Nirma se aaye, Rangin kapda bhi khil khil jaye,Sabki pasand Nirma”. You all must be aware of this advertising tagline by Nirma. With a mission to provide better products, better value, and better living to customers, Nirma introduced a low priced washing powder about 20 years ago for middle-class homemakers. That was a time when Nirma was available at Rs 3.5 in competition to Hindustan Lever Surf that was available at Rs 15.Twenty years ago Rs 15 was certainly a high amount for detergent and only upper-middle class families could manage to afford it but Nirma’s low-priced detergent created a revolution with a price tag of Rs 3.50. Over a period, the detergent became the most popular household washing powder across the country, even amongst high-income segments. This is what we call frontal attack, a direct attack to your competitor after analyzing its loopholes.

Flanking Attack

Have you heard about Ajit Bakery? This is a highly reputed bakery store in the Central India known for offering quality bakery items. At a time when the company was struggling to create a niche in the market, it tried researching on all the weak points and blind spots of its competitor capturing the largest share of the market in the Central India. Ajit made a thoughtful attack by opening all its stores about 1 ½ early as compared to the opening hours of its competitor.

Encirclement Attack

“SEIKO Moving ahead. Touching hearts” is an inspiring caption by Seiko driven with the motto to touch human hearts with amazing watch technology. To further expand its market share and earn increased revenue, the company exploited the microchip technology and made its range of watches visible by tapping all distribution channels and as much possible shelf space from up-market jewelry shops to local watch showrooms. This is what we say encirclement attack where a company launches various offensive campaigns impelling its competitor to have a defensive approach.

Bypass Attack

How many are you aware of Skype? How many have you actually used Skype? If you have ever used this technology, were you aware what was the driving technology behind Skype? Skype came up cloud telephony known as ‘Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)’, a term that was not even known when Skype was introduced in the year 2003. It was a time when Airtel and Vodafone were ruling the market with telephonic services but Skype with an idea to bypass their technologies came up with VoIP system while creating a niche in telephony services. This is what we call the bypass attack where the challenger bypasses the competitor by expanding its reach into untapped markets or by diversifying into innovative products.

Guerrilla Attack

What do you say about the dominance of LG TV on Samsung TV? How was Whirlpool able to overthrow its competition with Godrej in the refrigerator segment? The answer to both the questions is the Guerrilla attack where the companies did a thorough research on the untapped territories and then adopted all possible measures and marketing tactics to create a meaningful impact. The efforts that LG and Whirlpool made were small but meaningful and did make a difference in helping them gain a larger market share in their respective markets.

What are the Most Effective Business Growth Strategies

Have you ever thought why only 1/3rd of the start-up companies are sustainable? Why only 0.01% of that 1/3rd startups manage to climb the competitive ladder and turn into big business brands? The statistics are depressing but this is the truth hard to accept. The only reason behind turning start-ups to fully thriving large companies is effective business growth strategy. The owners or the designated professionals of successful brands have clear insight into their respective companies, functionalities, line of products or services, and are well attuned to the market trends. They constantly explore and execute innovative and beneficial business growth strategies for increased growth and higher profit margins.

Business growth strategies not just cater to envisioning organizational goals but also inculcating substantial plans to compete with all the competitors on your journey towards your long-term goal. You may face failures, there may be risk, you may have to overcome challenges but you should be deliberate and determined not to lose yourself or your business to your competitor.

Here are the 4 effective business growth strategies defined by the Ansoff Matrixintroduced by Igor Ansoff:

Strategy 1: Market Penetration

Market Penetration is a risk free business growth strategy that works with an approach to penetrate the existing market with the existing product. For example, a watch company slashing down its price as a promotional offer to attract more buyers and increase sales.

You can implement the strategy in the following ways:

· Increasing market share of the existing product

· Reducing prices of the existing product

· Enhancing the distribution channel

· Increasing marketing and promotional initiatives

Strategy 2: Product Development

Product development is a strategy with an approach to introduce a new product or infuse innovation in the current market with a clear understanding of the current market trend. For example, the growing two-wheeler market introducing e-scooters to fulfill the need of the existing auto market where environment-friendly means of transport has become an asset.

You can implement the strategy in the following ways:

· Investing in research to come up with innovations fulfilling the needs of the existing market

· Acquiring competitor’s product and infusing the same with your research, analysis, and resources to come up with a completely new and useful product

· Undergoing strategic partnership to have better reach with increased distribution

Strategy 3: Market Development

Market development strategy works with an approach to enter new markets with your existing product. For example, an Indian shoes company venturing into foreign countries for distributing its line of product to a new demographic.

You can implement the market development strategy in the following ways:

· Venturing into new domestic regions to have a firm establishment in the domestic market

· Expanding internationally with your existing product to have a strong global presence

· Fulfilling the needs and aspirations of various customer segments

Strategy 4: Diversification

Diversification strategy is a strategy that works with an approach to diversify your products and your markets in the following ways:

· Introducing related products and entering into markets that synergize with your existing line of business. This is also known as backward diversification. For example, a leather bag company introducing leather shoes is related or backward diversification.

· Introducing products and entering into markets that have no connections or synergy with your existing market. This also known as forward diversification caters to strengthening the future prospects of your existing business. For example, an investment company venturing into tourism sector is an unrelated or forward diversification.