How Do I Grow My Market Share?

When you're a challenger brand, it can be hard to steal share from your competitors. Everyone wants a bigger slice of the pie – so how can you get yours?

Growing your market share is one of the most important ways to beat the competition. Not only does it lead to greater revenue, it also results in enhanced customer loyalty and engagement. The magic combo for a successful brand!

The marketplace is noisy and overcrowded, often dominated by multinational corporations that have limitless resources and data. As a challenger brand, you have to be clever. You need to be resourceful with your marketing spend. You need to avoid the pitfalls of guesswork and assumptions. Having the right brand intelligence to act on is essential. Only then can you grow your market share in a meaningful and sustained way – and beat the high rollers of your category.

So, what data should you be looking at?

How people feel and think about your brand
This may be an obvious point, but you shouldn’t make any decisions before understanding how people relate to your brand. To identify areas in need of improvement, it’s essential to have a granular comprehension of your brand performance. By deciphering what people like and don’t like about your brand, you can start to plan for category domination.

Know your category
You need to know your category inside out if you are to grow your user base and steal market share away from your competitors. It’s essential to understand what’s important to the category as a whole, before you make any changes to your branding, product, or distribution channels.

Understanding your category has a few layers, so make sure that you have a full grasp of the following:

• Category drivers – What people feel they need most from brands within your category.
• How those category drivers change over time – Nothing is forever and changes these days can happen at the drop of a hat. Consider where the market is and where it could go.
• All segments within your category – All consumers are different, and it’s important to recognize that different people need different things. Make sure that you’re taking note of how your category plays out for all of them!

Once you have a full understanding of your category, you’ll be better equipped at knowing what your target market wants and how to give it to them.

Tap into segments where your brand can make a difference
Uncover which customer segments offer the biggest opportunity and concentrate your energy into meeting their needs. For instance, if your product is popular with women over the age of 45, it would be highly unlikely for you to get significant value from targeting men under 25. On the other hand, maybe there are segments that you have yet to uncover because of a lack of brand intelligence.

Do your due diligence to make sure that you’re covering all of your bases. With good data, you can make smart decisions and empower your brand to target the customer segments that are most likely to add value to your brand.

Win over your non-users
Non-users are people active in your category who don't use or interact with your brand. If you're looking to grow your market share and drive penetration, these non-users form a large part of your target audience!

Figure out why they turn to other brands and not yours, and whether it’s something you can learn from and solve for. Maybe you’re missing some crucial category drivers or you’ve failed to evolve your brand to fit changing category needs. Once you’ve identified the “why,” launch a marketing campaign or adjust your brand strategy for different ways to win them over. Identify what your brand has that differentiates it from the rest – for better!

How ProQuo AI can help
At ProQuo AI, we help you identify how people feel about your brand, where your brand lies within its category, and use AI-powered guidance so that you can get bigger, faster.

Our 16 Drivers are proven to measure the strength of your brand's relationship with people. Grow them, and your brand grows. With ProQuo AI, you can see what’s driving your brand forward and what’s holding it back, and guidance to adjust it to your customers’ thoughts, feelings, and desires.

Interested in learning more about how to expand your brand’s reach? Take a look at our guide, How to Craft a Killer Trade Story.