Dan Janal | Publicity and PR Leads Blog

A new book about how Google rose to prominence reminds me of how market leaders constantly play “King of the Mountain.”

In my 25 years of high tech marketing of working with market leaders as well as start-ups, I’ve seen many dominant companies with overwhelming market shares be displaced by other companies.

Remember these (and you’ll show your age)?

Wordstar owned the word processing market.
Displaced by Word Perfect.
Displaced by Microsoft Word.

Netscape owned the browser market
Microsoft Internet Explorer rules the roost today.
Firefox is picking up steam.

Yahoo owned the search market.
Google is king now.

What does this mean for you?

Each company was completely dominant. It wasn’t a nearly 50/50 split like Coke and Pepsi or Hertz and Avis. It was all or nothing.

Yet, people with vision created a new concept and stuck with it long enough to see their dreams come true.

How they did it is beyond the scope of this blog entry — or dozens of marketing and finance books — but the message is clear.

If you believe in yourself, your dreams could come true.

Hold on to this vision as you make your New Years Resolutions.

Dan Janal
Your Fearless PR LEADER
PR LEADS
http://www.prleads.com/

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A client called the other day with dread in her voice.

All her efforts to sell her product have been met with less than spectacular results. She has a good product, but it just isn’t selling. She asked what was wrong and what she could do.

Without knowing all the details, I suggested four things that could be wrong — and that could be wrong with your marketing as well:

- wrong price
- wrong message
- wrong audience
- wrong time

I also suggested that she might need help in selling her product and that she should look to distributors and catalogs that would reach her audience. Sure, she would have to give the distributors part of the action, but 50 percent of something is better than 100 percent of nothing.

Rather than admit defeat and being a rotten online marketer which was how she was berating herself, I suggested that no matter how good she is, no one has all the money or time to reach all the potential markets for her product. Even if she was doing great, she should be looking to create alliances and find people willing to sell her products.

There’s no shame in admitting that you have only so many hours in the day to market your products and services. There’s no shame in admitting you have a limited budget of dollars that can be spent on various marketing methods.

But there is shame and conceit in saying you and only you can do the job yourself. You need to find partners who can help you sell your products and services. Pay them well, and they will reward you with more clients and customers.

Dan Janal
Your Fearless PR LEADER
PR LEADS
www.prleads.com

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Who do you think will be Time Magazine’s “Man of the Year?”

My vote is for “Mother Nature.”

The weather — and man’s inability to control it — is the most important story of the year in my view. What do you think?

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