The American Express Strategy

If I had to guess, I'd say we have American Express cards for about 90% of our clients rather than Visa or MasterCard. Every time another client gives us their corporate AMEX card I think about how American Express has just completely taken the business market over. It's really not even remotely close to their key competitors (Visa and MC)

This seems to be due to their laser focused strategy and consistency of marketing, advertising and promo to their target public (audience) that they have decided to go after - the business owners and corporations. They aren't dispersed with their strategy, they are completely and utterly committed to every avenue they can possible employ to go after businesses. They have a strong direct response campaign, digital advertisement, their own social media site called OPEN Network, magazine advertisements etc etc.

The takeaway that I have personally extracted from this strategy to completely control the market is this:

1) Decide on and define your target public (audience) clearly so you know who you are going after specifically

2) Create a strategy that is coordinated to get you in front of your target public in every possible way to generate interest and response

3) Have a strong business development team to back up your advertising, marketing and PR strategies in order to aggressively convert interest into sales. I can only imagine that American Express must have this point completely nailed. When someone has an interest in becoming a new business client, chances are, they will close them.

A key point in growth and expansion in any company is to accurately predict the effort and actions it will take to attain the goals. Even once you feel you have nailed what the estimated efforts need to be, it would be wise to double or triple the estimate in order to guarantee your position. In other words, think big and really go after it. But don't get distracted, stay focused. Know your target audience, define your strategy and hammer it until you have controlled it.

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group