Daily Lab: Contract into relevance
Don’t expand, focus.
If you want to grow your business, expanding into other categories will likely just dilute your demand.
So how do you grow?
First, you grow your relevance for your very best customers. You become a better brand for them.
Then, you contract your offering until what you’re selling is truly unique to you.
As Al Ries wrote, “Everybody is looking for ways to build their businesses by expanding into other categories. Their real strategies should be to build their brands by dominating their categories.”
Expansion dilutes what awareness we had.
But what entrepreneurs should try to do is amplify it.
“And often,” Ries continues, “the best way to do that is by contracting their brands so they stand for something.”
So, are you trying to stand for everything—and diluting your demand and awareness across multiple locations, categories, service offerings, or product lines?
Or can you contract your brand to stand for one thing in particular?
What would that one thing be?
