Day 3 - Market Research

[Jasper68]

Hey @CCarter thanks again. I'm certainly not an outsider when it comes to the niche, I know a lot about this and have 'lived it' for many years. So certainly no lack of credibility I don't think.

It was more about whether women connect with women more in my niche, or at least with the idea of a couple, working to become more self-reliant etc. People seem to love a back story :-)

I think you might well be right about concentrating too hard on something people don't really notice. It was really more of a fleeting thought, and I certainly don't intend to let it be something I worry about.

There will always be some folks that prefer a certain feel or style to a site, a certain type of author or whatever, but I am sure people will resonate more with someone who gives good information, has a modicum of wit (hmmm, not sure if I've demonstrated that here yet?) and creates valuable content.

As to your gender, I'm intrigued, but in this world where it's perfectly ok and trendy to identify yourself as gender binary or neutral or whatever they call it, I'm not spending too much time thinking about whether you are he, she, them or something completely different.

Nice to have an air of mystery :-)

Cheers for all your help, on this, and on the other thread I posted today. I'm making progress, got some focus, it's all good :-)

 

[Astro]

Wow, wow... So Awesome!
I thought I was onto something that I've never really seen or heard of, and now today I not only discovered it already exists, but I found examples that were EXACT matches ~ I mean, if I had come up with every facet of what I want to do and shipped it off to a designer and they came back with the results I found, it would have been a perfect match. For about 1-second, I was discouraged. But, it occurs to me that, until I really dug in and researched it, I had never heard of this "competitor". If anything, this "competitor" signals to me that a market exists. Now, my problem becomes distinguishing myself from them. What's my UNIQUE SELLING PROPOSITION?

You cover this here as well. I purposely have NOT looked too much into these guys yet because I want to first come up with my solutions to things before I see how they are handling things. THEN, I want to dive deep into what they are doing and see what solutions I like from them, see where I think my ideas are better, etc.

On one hand: They can be Uber and I will be Lyft; they can be Coke and I will be Pepsi etc.
On the otherhand... until I really, really searched, I didn't know they existed, so 1) now I feel validated about my niche, and 2) I can probably take them out.... (Just sayin')

 

[Philip J. Fry]

The goal isn't to take on ESPN out of the gates, but take on the competitors within reach, and climb up the ladder as you gain notoriety within your industry. If you have an extremely unique selling proposition (USP) and the value can be seen immediately, you may become the de-facto alternative for your industry, and this will propel you to heights you may not be ready for, but will love

Yup. This is what I did at my old company when we were a startup and I took them to $7,000,000. You just pick the competitor that you can take on, challenge them, and when you're done, you pick the next biggest guy in the market and challenge them. Repeat until you're the top dog in the market or industry or vertical. When you're there, diversify and pray that you can keep your spot. But that's far, far away.

My spin - I download all my competitors' adwords ads, creatives I can find, and put in a respective folders called Competition > CompetiitonWebsiteURLs.com > Adwords. I gather about 100 competitors, mostly directly, and some in-direct competition's data and just save it. After a week or so when I'm going through my planning, I go back and mentally absorb everything. I try to figure out as much about the competition as possible. During this time I create a textfile (yeah lame, .txt), with Likes and Dislikes, and just add every note I can about what my competition is doing.

Exactly. You figure out a chink in their armour and then you exploit it. If Competitor A stopped link building, you can exceed in backlinks and win that way. If competitor A has really broad content, you can win by being more niche specific and satisfying customer intent better that way. You can win on relevancy. If Competitor A has a developed product line with tons of 5 star reviews, you can win by offering a lower price and getting reviews with discounted offerings now. They won't stoop down to a lower price since they're the "big guy" but you can as a startup. It'll be how you close the lead. They should be afraid of you but they don't even notice. You'll take them by surprise. In fact, they have staff to pay and margins to meet. You're a one-man startup with your needs taken are of! You can compete on price for now!

"A fool learns from their own mistakes, a wise man learns from the mistakes of others."

True. What I learned from my old boss is to learn from other people. Hire people better at something than you and learn it from them. You can replace them afterwards if they become too expensive but only then. The relationship is important.

But the more the unique angle you have and if you are able to broadcast it correctly through your brand's communication and marketing efforts, that can be the key and corner stone to your business. The USP is the reason you'll be profitable.

Yes, branding is about how you're different than the other brands in the market. U in USP is for unique.

Wait a minute now, Carter, what if the competition copies me. Well, that's going to happen, but you've got to highlight your biggest benefit and advantage over your competition, until it's no longer an advantage, then you move on to the next thing by surveying your customers, listening to customer service, and figuring out what your consumers want new features of.

No, this is an ill deserved fear. No brand's going to copy your USP. That's not how branding works. Brands state their *unique* competitive advantage, which is how they're different than other choices in the market. Customers realise they have a problem, do research for it, then find brands to solve their problem and develop a feeling for the brand, and then makes a purchase. This is the AIDA model. If your competitor doesn't distinguish they branding from yours, that's stupid and bad branding. You don't have to worry about this competitor.

One thing that I can guarantee, "Consumers don't know what they want, but they will tell you what they DON'T Want." Keep that in mind throughout your surveying.

True. Some consumers need to be educated on your product before they will buy. You have to teach them why they want X for them to buy X. Take umbrella insurance. It covers you from a lawsuit if you're a high net worth individual. You probably don't know what that is, if you're new rich but once you do, you might max out your auto and home insurance and buy umbrella insurance, as it is $100/month for $1,000,000 in liability. You can buy in blocks of $1,000,000 in liability coverage. No need to worry about going broke due to a lawsuit now. Yeah, that takes education to sell someone.

One thing you have to realize, is if you become very successful, they competition is going to copy you no matter what, you might as well take a huge leap forward before they do that. Keep your customers happy, and get referrals and you'll have no problem. Customer service is key though.

Depends on the industry. Some industries don't have a long customer lifetime value. For travel, people only travel internationally once a year. Not a lot of referral opportunities there and you won't see the tourist again, probably. There are some return visits but that's rare. This is definitely true for high customer lifetime value industries such as B2B SaaSes though.