The Size of the Pie

If your company wants a bigger piece of the pie, there are two ways to go:

• Cut a larger slice from the same size pie.
• Make the pie bigger and see your share grow along with it.

That is, increasing desire for your goods and services so that the overall demand is greater allows you to get a bigger piece of the pie without having to grab market share from your competitors.

Not that we’re opposed to grabbing market share from your competitors. But there are times when making a bigger pie works just as well.

Think about these opportunities:

• Does your product happen to be gluten free? Reach out to people who need that in their food. Today you might make macaroons, but tomorrow they could be gluten-free cookies.
• Is your backpack lighter than most? Then it could be the ideal commuter backpack. Hikers won’t hold it against you.
• Do you know that guys are borrowing your hand cream from their wives? Reframe it for a manly audience.

Your website can help you.

Here are some simple examples.

This simple landing page reaches out (via CPC ads) to people who are looking for help with a particular type of machinery. The client works with the motors rather than the machines, and usually markets to people searching for help with the component. If your machine quits working, though, that’s the part you care about. This page is speaking to people who are thinking about the machine, rather than the motor.

Blogging for a snack food company, we extended their snacks into ingredients for festive desserts.

For another client, we’ve created ebooks that speak to different target customer groups. The product works for several different target markets, and presenting it differently to different groups makes that clear to prospective clients.

Talk to your customers and find out how they use your goods and services in ways you hadn’t foreseen. Find out who borrows the product. Think about who needs your product and doesn’t yet realize it.

Back in 2002, some wag created a found poem from the words of then-president George Bush. The final stanza goes like this:

Families is where our nation finds hope
Where our wings take dream.
Put food on your family!
Knock down the tollbooth!
Vulcanize society!
Make the pie higher!
Make the pie higher!

We tend to be more conservative in our speech, but we encourage you to consider making the pie bigger. Digital marketing allows us to reach new markets and to pinpoint them with our messages, enlarging the pie of demand in ways that might surprise us.