Dan Martell - November 21, 2016


How To Market Against Established Competitors


Episode Stats


Length

6 minutes

Words per minute

209.74825

Word count

1,433

Sentence count

79

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I talk about how to compete against established companies in the market and why it's important to have a good story in order to make your product stand out from the pack. In this episode we talk about: 1. Pick a niche 2. Tell a great story 3. Have a product hook 4. Have customer service 5. Customer service

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
00:00:00.640 Yeah, don't talk about the fact that I tried something new
00:00:03.440 and it didn't work out.
00:00:12.160 How do you compete against established competitors in market?
00:00:15.200 Wouldn't it be awesome for you not to care
00:00:17.840 about your competitors, especially the big guys?
00:00:20.240 For them to be copying you, even though you're like,
00:00:22.480 well, I don't want them to copy me.
00:00:23.760 Yes, it is better because that means
00:00:25.400 that you're doing something right.
00:00:26.920 Or that anytime they get mentioned in the press,
00:00:29.240 your company gets mentioned, that's the right way
00:00:31.740 to compete against a big competitor,
00:00:33.360 because it can be frustrating,
00:00:34.840 especially if they're copying you,
00:00:36.760 especially if nobody's paying attention to you,
00:00:39.340 especially if you feel like they have more time
00:00:41.280 and resources to invest in their business,
00:00:43.280 and you're always trying to figure out the next step
00:00:45.300 and the next leverage point,
00:00:46.500 and how do you even make your product competitive?
00:00:48.720 Well, in this video, I'm gonna share with you guys
00:00:50.420 the way I've thought about competing against companies,
00:00:52.620 because when I started my company Clarity.fm,
00:00:55.240 even though early in launching the product,
00:00:57.440 It was innovative and new.
00:00:59.940 Shortly after, about six months after launching the company,
00:01:02.620 we had a huge company enter the market.
00:01:05.080 I'm gonna tell you a story.
00:01:05.980 Company name rhymes with Boogle.
00:01:08.140 And you know, that was a crazy moment.
00:01:11.920 And a lot of people thought, what are you gonna do?
00:01:13.940 How are you gonna react?
00:01:14.860 Doesn't this mean that your idea is gonna get squashed?
00:01:17.420 And you know, a lot of entrepreneurs
00:01:19.560 might look at it this way.
00:01:20.440 The question I always ask myself is,
00:01:22.640 do I care more about solving this problem
00:01:25.840 than anybody else in the world?
00:01:27.100 And the answer was yes.
00:01:28.260 Now the cool part is about a year after that,
00:01:30.240 I got invited to actually spend time with their team
00:01:33.200 to understand kind of how they were thinking
00:01:35.340 about the product roadmap and how they were getting
00:01:37.180 distribution and marketing.
00:01:38.520 And I thought for sure their marketing was gonna be simple
00:01:41.220 because they already had access to hundreds of millions
00:01:43.880 of people.
00:01:44.860 And what I realized is that within big companies,
00:01:47.420 even though their team was five times the size of ours,
00:01:50.900 their budget was a multi-million dollar a year budget
00:01:53.360 to work on that product, they couldn't get the other
00:01:56.160 departments in their company to actually deploy
00:01:58.760 their solution to get more traffic and more traction.
00:02:01.560 So they had to fight the same way we did
00:02:03.440 and that was really awesome, honestly, for me to find out.
00:02:07.200 And that's where I realized that there's some best practices
00:02:10.480 that everybody can use when trying to compete
00:02:12.700 against established competitors in the market.
00:02:15.020 Number one is to pick a niche.
00:02:16.580 I don't care who you are, if you're starting in a business,
00:02:19.560 in a market that has established competitors,
00:02:21.480 you need to find a niche.
00:02:23.080 Niche it to win it. 0.93
00:02:24.880 So that means going deep, not being,
00:02:27.720 it's what I call subcategory.
00:02:28.940 So not say I'm gonna build a point of sale software
00:02:32.580 for small businesses.
00:02:34.080 I would say go to one level deeper.
00:02:36.020 I'm building a point of sale software for flower shops.
00:02:39.340 And I would go to another subcategory.
00:02:41.120 And I would say I'm building a point of sale software
00:02:44.380 for flower shops in a region in Canada.
00:02:46.940 Just go super niche, super focused
00:02:49.140 to allow you to really learn from that core customer
00:02:51.320 and then kind of expand after the fact.
00:02:53.600 Number two is for you to tell a great story.
00:02:56.460 You know, when building a business,
00:02:58.100 especially if the company is founder-led,
00:03:00.960 there's probably a moment when that idea came to you.
00:03:04.000 There's probably a frustration that you saw
00:03:06.180 or you were talking to somebody,
00:03:07.480 and there's an origin story.
00:03:08.800 And you have the opportunity,
00:03:10.100 more than an established competitor, to tell that story.
00:03:13.200 And here's what I believe.
00:03:14.820 The person with the best story wins, okay?
00:03:17.920 And there's origin story, there's product story.
00:03:20.920 That is for you to figure out and define
00:03:22.980 to make sure that you integrate it in all things
00:03:25.140 in your product and in your marketing.
00:03:26.580 So that's number two.
00:03:27.420 Three is to have a product hook.
00:03:30.120 When people go to your website,
00:03:31.800 you need to figure out how can I promise something
00:03:34.700 that's super valuable to them that they need
00:03:36.740 and get them to experience that as fast as possible.
00:03:40.340 That's the hook.
00:03:41.180 That's the promise on the webpage
00:03:42.840 that speaks directly to them.
00:03:44.340 It's why the niche matters so much.
00:03:46.080 It's why the story matters so much.
00:03:47.580 Number three is to have a product hook
00:03:49.420 because big companies try to be all things to everybody
00:03:52.140 and you have the opportunity to speak directly to them.
00:03:54.940 Number four is customer service.
00:03:57.920 You know, you can't scale caring,
00:03:59.780 and the beauty of being a small start-up
00:04:02.080 is that you have the opportunity
00:04:03.620 to really hold your customers by the hand.
00:04:05.380 You have the opportunity to reach out to partners
00:04:07.460 and say, look, I'm personally gonna be involved
00:04:09.660 in this project, I wanna integrate with your solution,
00:04:12.460 and my team is ready to go,
00:04:13.700 and all resources are set up to do this,
00:04:16.640 to make this a win-win,
00:04:17.900 and I'm here to let you know that this is gonna work.
00:04:20.400 And big companies typically don't have that resource.
00:04:23.160 They don't, I mean the truth is their teams
00:04:24.980 don't care to that level.
00:04:26.580 And I just think from a customer service
00:04:28.440 and how quickly you respond to emails
00:04:30.360 to the ability to write custom thank you cards
00:04:32.960 to your early customers to picking up the phone
00:04:35.900 and doing what I call smile and dial.
00:04:37.420 Every Thursday at Clarity I'd pick up the phone
00:04:39.360 and call five to six customers.
00:04:40.920 And just learn who they are and what they're about
00:04:43.540 and really just connect with them and their challenges
00:04:45.500 so that I can make better product decisions.
00:04:47.480 So that's number four.
00:04:48.900 Number five to me is find a transcending vehicle.
00:04:51.700 I got this idea from my buddy Gare
00:04:53.680 when he was kind of analyzing
00:04:55.040 some of the fastest growing companies in the world
00:04:57.980 and he realized that a lot of them found trends
00:05:00.620 or other companies that were on this growth trend
00:05:02.900 and they kind of attached themselves to those vehicles.
00:05:05.040 So for example, Lululemon and Yoga.
00:05:07.820 Yoga was growing as an industry.
00:05:09.420 Lululemon decided to really focus on that industry and grew.
00:05:12.580 I seen this recently with a software product
00:05:14.420 called Zen Planner.
00:05:15.520 They're focused on building a solution for CrossFit boxes
00:05:19.540 to be able to manage their membership.
00:05:21.240 Now, Zen Planner didn't start off in CrossFit.
00:05:23.200 They started in martial arts, but they made the pivot
00:05:25.620 when they saw the growth opportunity.
00:05:26.920 So, transcending vehicles.
00:05:28.380 When there's an existing big company, right,
00:05:31.380 in a market and you wanna compete,
00:05:33.180 you gotta do these five things.
00:05:34.760 Number one, you wanna pick a niche.
00:05:36.340 Number two is you wanna tell a great story
00:05:38.280 because the origin story and why you're doing it
00:05:40.120 is gonna matter so much to your customers
00:05:41.940 as well as your team.
00:05:43.260 Number three is you've gotta figure out your product hook.
00:05:45.520 Put it on your homepage.
00:05:46.840 Make the promise clear, focus, speak to them.
00:05:50.000 Number four, you wanna make sure that you deliver
00:05:52.300 the best customer service possible and connect with them.
00:05:55.680 And then fifth, find a transcending vehicle.
00:05:58.980 Some market or other company.
00:06:00.880 Integrate with them that you see that they're growing.
00:06:02.840 It's a trend and then that way it's gonna help you
00:06:05.620 build that market traction so that you can eventually
00:06:07.880 become the big guy.
00:06:10.020 So what I wanna hear from you below in the comments
00:06:11.660 is I want to hear your stories of how you've competed
00:06:14.900 against existing incumbents in competition in the market.
00:06:18.420 I would love to hear from your comments below,
00:06:20.840 in the comments below.
00:06:22.480 Hope you're having a crazy good day, an incredible day.
00:06:26.040 I want to challenge you as per usual
00:06:27.460 to live a bigger life and a bigger business,
00:06:29.200 and I'll see you next week.
00:06:30.420 If you like this video, be sure to subscribe to my channels
00:06:32.800 for other tips on how to start and grow your business,
00:06:35.360 as well as I'd encourage you to join my newsletter
00:06:37.760 so that you can get exclusive invites to events,
00:06:41.160 community contests as well as other free training videos.
00:06:43.780 And if you're ready to get going to get some more videos,
00:06:45.580 I got a couple queued up for you.
00:06:47.520 Hope this video finds you well.
00:06:48.760 I'll see you next week.