inbound-marketing

Are You Worthy?23The second method for creating a winning strategy inthe era of inbound marketing is to be the world’s bestat what you do within your existing market rules. If youare not the world’s best within your market, define yourmarket more narrowly before one of your competitorstakes that position. Take the case of the only monkeywrench manufacturer in San Diego who has been sellingto plumbers in Southern California his whole life. (Welike to use “money wrench” as an example—it’s not areal business.) The good news about the Web is that itenables this manufacturer to get found by plumbers in SanAntonio, Texas; San Francisco, California; San Juan, PuertoRico; San Remo, Italy; and so on. The bad news is that itopens the company up to competitors in all these othercities and in Southern California. Rather than competeon the same playing field with hundreds of other monkeywrench manufacturers until the profit margins erodeto zero, the owner of the company decides to specializein monkey wrenches for left-handed plumbers—wherehe quickly becomes the world’s best at it. Because farmore left-handed plumbers exist around the world than inSouthern California, the manufacturer’s business explodes.If you cannot rethink your boundaries to get yourself abroad untapped market the way Apple did with the iPod,then you ought to narrow your boundaries within yourexisting market and become the world’s best within thoseboundaries.If you need further help redefining your value proposition,we recommend you read the first few chapters of BlueOcean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne.The ideas presented in this book are quite similar to thoseof Professor Hax.