How to increase online market share

Markets are inherently limited. Sure, they can grow, and a business can actively stoke demand, but there will only ever be so many people who are looking to buy what you sell.

This means that one of your primary goals as a business is to secure an ever-larger slice of the available pie. You need to increase your market share, or in modern times, your online market share.

Let’s drill down on the term ‘market share’: what it means, the factors that influence it, and how to increase yours.

What is market share?

Your market share is the portion of the market that your business controls. Usually represented as a percentage, it gives you a sense of where you stand against your competitors, and the size of the opportunity that is still able to be capitalised upon.

Take this over-simplified example:

You’re in the business of selling items. You sell 10,000 units a year. Across the market 100,000 selling items are bought every year. In this scenario your market share is 10%.

Some companies enjoy an online market share that verges on a monopoly—Google, for example, has a search engine market share of well over 90%. Other companies find themselves in hyper-competitive industries where a small market share is essentially expected—competing against the entire internet, the market share of online retailers can be particularly small.

But no matter your industry, the aim of your business should always be the same: to increase your market share.

What factors would most impact your market share?

Market share is impacted by a wealth of factors that lay beyond your control, from economic changes to customer, competitor, and market trends. But there are several internal factors that impact your ability to gain market share too.

Four of the most important include:

1. Tools and technology

By offering customers innovative technology, you can encourage them to choose you over your competitors. And by utilising smart tools in-house, you can work more efficiently and effectively, becoming more productive, marketing yourself better, and identifying opportunities that you can exploit.

2. Customer loyalty

The most valuable customer is a loyal customer. Not only is it far cheaper to retain a current customer than it is to acquire a new one, loyal customers help to ensure you don’t lose market share to your competitors.

3. Quality employees

Team members are called a business’s most important asset for a reason. In terms of market share, your workers will form the all-important face of your brand and will be tasked with implementing the growth strategies designed to increase your slice of the pie.

4. Digital marketing

Digital marketing is perhaps your most powerful tool for increasing your market share. It can increase brand awareness, grant you access to new audiences, shape customer opinion, and frame your brand and offerings as the obvious choice.

Digital marketing is so powerful and multi-faceted that it’s worth looking at in more detail.

How does digital marketing increase market share?

Digital marketing forms the core of our DigitalArchitect System®, particularly for ecommerce-focused businesses looking to increase online retail market share. It encompasses a wealth of strategies and techniques, which enable you to:

Increase brand awareness

The first step toward increasing your online sales market share is to make sure your target audience knows about you. Between SEO, content and paid ads, digital marketing can get your business in front of far more potential customers than traditional marketing methods.

Capitalise on the Google opportunity

Capturing leads and making sales is only possible if you drive relevant visitors to your website, and there’s no more effective way to do that than search engine optimisation (SEO). This is a set of techniques that makes your website more ‘Google-friendly’, pushing it up the rankings for key terms.

Gain a deeper understanding of your market

Another way digital marketing is superior to traditional marketing like print and broadcast is in the ability to choose and learn about your audience. Google and social media offer deep demographic information – you can choose the type of person you want to target, and you increase market share by testing the effectiveness of your marketing with different groups.

Offer direct competitor comparisons

While your market can certainly expand, increasing market share is often more of a zero-sum game – when your share goes up, your competitor’s goes down. If your product or service is superior to a competitor’s, content that offers a direct comparison between you and them can ensure a customer chooses you.

Engage with customers

When customers are familiar with your brand, trust your brand and like your brand, you’re more likely to increase your online market share. With the ability to engage directly with customers, social media offers an unmatched opportunity to develop this familiarity, trust and affection.

Improve your offerings through feedback

If you enjoy an engaged customer base, digital marketing offers the tools to improve your offering through direct feedback. Use social media and email marketing to conduct surveys that get to the core of what your customers want and how you can improve.

Build customer loyalty

Increasing market share is as much about retaining current customers as it is about securing new customers – if you win a new customer but lose a current customer, you’ll go nowhere. Encourage return business through digital marketing, perhaps through memberships, loyalty deals and discounts.

Capitalise on online opportunities with DigitalArchitect

With the right strategy, tools and (most importantly) mindset, your business can boost your online market share significantly. Do it well, and you can enjoy sustainable growth for years to come.

At Growth Partners we’ve spent years helping businesses increase their market share using our proprietary DigitalArchitect System®.

DigitalArchitect is designed to give us a deep understanding of not just your market, but your customers and competitors too. It reveals the challenges you’ll need to overcome and opportunities you should capitalise on in order to increase your market share. We’ll even give you a three-year ROI projection on your investment.

If you’re ready to secure a larger slice of the pie, we’re ready to help. Get in touch for a no-obligation chat today.