Marketing Opportunities

Marketing opportunities by entrepreneurs are usually found by and environmental scanning.  This allows them to examine trends/changes in the marketplace and watching/talking to consumers.  They also consider structural changes in society and determine how these changes will affect the needs of consumers.  Looking outside your business or potential business and noticing what potential positive changes could become opportunities for your business and customers.

The opportunities to look for can be broken down into:

• Product or service:  improvements, innovations, new product or service development
• Target Market:  target market growth, expansion into new segments of the market, new          or changing customer needs or wants
• Purchase Rates/Buying Habits:  changes in average transaction size, buying frequency or growth of a distribution channel
• Pricing:  the move away from regular discounting by competitors
• Market:  a market experiencing growth or moving away from being just a seasonal market
• Market Share:  an opportunity to steal share from existing competitors
• Competition:  decreasing number of competitors
• Business Relationships:  new business relationships identified
• Customer Service:  growing customer demand for high quality or after hours customer service
• Distribution:  the number of distribution channels expanding or new distribution channel emerging
• Geography:  competitors reducing their presence in states or even countries
• Technological Factors:  new technology allowing more convenient ways of purchasing for customers, or new technology to increase communication with customers
• Economic Factors:  strengthening of the currency or the economy
• Government factors:  changes to government, changes to national or state legislation or taxation rulings

By taking advantages of the positive changes are likely to occur in the market over the next year before your competitors do could represent real growth for your business.