Turning Competitors Customers Into Yours
A montra for all business plan makers and marketing directors. When searching for a target market to direct our services too, it is easy to generate the first one: the customers that my competitor has would be perfect. Then it takes more research. When we are prepared to launch our program and share with our target market, the spray approach is least effective and most costly the majority of time, direct marketing tends to perform better.
When we think of targetting our competitors market, it often seems like
an impetrable fortress, and there is no trojan horse to directly get in.
A company has taken on the task of getting Starbucks customers, and are
doing a good job of it. Fon, based out of Madrid, Spain, has taken on
targetting Starbucks WiFi Market. The service in Starbucks is provided
by T-Mobile around the world. Starbucks customers pay $10/day for
internet service; a ridiculous amount.
Fon found their target market to offer internet service and they searched out and found a trojan horse to directly market to them. They go to every Starbucks and find another business, apartment, or home and offer them FREE internet service if the person will use the Fonbucks router. Their specially designed router takes an internet signal and splits into a "personal use" and "public use" signal. The personal use is for the resident near the Starbucks, the public for $2/day is for the market of Starbucks. T-mobile hasn't made any comments, yet they must be prepping a response.
The numbers here in the U.S. alone are staggering. Fon has over 44,000 subscribers in the US alone. How big of a jump have they made we ask? They targetted their market and have gone from 17,000 to 44,000 subscribers in two months.
When we start out today, searching for market to directly market to our target population, slide on our creative hat. If you have the product / service that is fills the need, you are competitive or in this case just not too greedy ($2 versus $10) then their is a way to get in, because the people (the target market) will want you in.
Posted on Sunday, April 20, 2008 at 6:19 AM
Edited on: Sunday, April 20, 2008 6:24 AMPosted in Business News (RSS)