The best possible information service is one that organizes or re-organizes a marketplace in a way hitherto unseen. It’s a key reason why Arts Hub was a success.
The arts is a fragmented, dispersed industry, there are all the different genres – performing arts, visual arts, music and so on, each with many smaller sub-groups. Artists often work as individuals, or in very small groups. Arts businesses tend to the small end of the size scale. It’s this fragmentation both through genre and location that enabled Arts Hub to position itself as the single consistent information source across the industry, heightening its legitimacy and appeal.
Any business can enter a marketplace, it’s a rarer business that can create or organize a marketplace by adopting an innovative approach to way in which the business addresses the needs of customers. The trick is to tap into latent demand – people who didn’t know they need the service until the service is presented to them in a context that they comprehend.
Copycat businesses abound on and offline. But businesses that create a new marketplace where one did not previously exist are far fewer.
You challenge must always be to take a second look at your chosen area or niche. Of course a competitor analysis is a good starting point, but you need to move beyond a simple assessment of their current product offerings, and try casting a fresh eye across the equation of products and customers. Perhaps you could repurpose a product and introduce it to a hitherto untapped customer set? How can you create a new way to deliver the goods or services people need?
With our Arts Hub online business our keys to success in the market were two fold:
- We produced the first ever comprehensive arts job advertisement service
- We produced the first ever national, cross-discipline news service for the arts
Interestingly we watched competitors open up new websites, but always fail. For example, someone launched a subscription-based copy of Arts Hub but focused solely on the dance sector. They gently faded away after a few months. The market wasn’t large enough, we were already covering much of the same content, and they didn’t have the depth or diversity to grow beyond their very small niche.
The internet has proven a fascinating enabler of marketplaces that could never have existed previously. But now after ten or so more years of the growth of internet commerce the original markets have started to become saturated and stale. Who needs another real estate, jobs or finance site? The winners will be the new businesses that take a new approach, and challenge the old timers at their own game by reinventing their products and presenting them in a new way to a new coalescing of customer niches.
Image credit: Flickr danielbroche
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