Summary
So you want to learn how to beat the competition in business and learn how a one-man business outperformed a corporate “leader” in his market?
The first thing to understand is that you shouldn’t be afraid of competition. There are a lot of other people doing what you want to do sure, but the market is big enough for everyone.
Even if the market isn’t big enough there are ways that you can differentiate yourself and turn a red ocean into a blue ocean.
In this video, I go over 5 ways you can beat your competition in business, even if you just started or feel like your market is too saturated.
Transcript
How to Deal with Competition in Business
Most of us when we enter business are entering a hostile environment.
We’re competing with players who have been in the market for years, who are much bigger than us. More, well-funded have more results than us have bigger teams than us.
And it can be tempting to sit down at our desk, look at our competition and say, I should just give up right now, but today we’re going to cover how you can not only compete as an underdog, but actually outperform your competition by making a few small changes, let’s get into it.
So it’s totally natural to go to a new market or a new niche and look at what the competition is doing and just be completely intimidating.
And for that reason, for the most part, I try not to look at the competition. Honestly, I try to just focus on customers. I don’t have Facebook newsfeed on my computer.
I don’t have Facebook on my phone, so I don’t actually see what other ads are running most of the time. But every couple of months off to get on Facebook from another browser or something like that.
And I’ll accidentally see the newsfeed. And all of a sudden I see dozens of competing offers and they all look amazing. And all of a sudden, I start to get anxiety and freak out and think that I’m going out of business, that I remember, I haven’t paid attention to these competitors at all. And I’m doing just fine. So the first thing to understand is that yes, there is competition out there, but the market is so much bigger than you could ever imagine.
And there’s pretty much room for all of us, but today we’re gonna talk about five ways that you can get rid of some of this competitive anxiety compete with the competition, go out there and take customers.
Even if you’re just getting started. Now, stuff is important. I remember reading a book about entering a new market, and they’re talking about how this is a hostile act and will be perceived as such. And if you’re already in business and you see a new competitor come into the market, you know what I’m talking about?
All of a sudden, everybody is judging you. Everybody’s trying to cut you down. The entrance of a new player into a market is not well received until you prove to them. We’re here and we’re here to stay and we’re not backing down. And so you have to have a attitude going in, like we’re not backing down, but let’s get into how to actually do this.
So the internet has commoditized everything. Meaning we used to just compete with people in our hometown. If we’re an attorney, for example, and we’re in golden Colorado, we might only be competing with attorneys in golden Colorado, but it’s gotten to the point where we can probably get legal advice from anywhere in the world.
Of course, this is a specialty. We might want localized advice, but especially in a field like marketing or something, we can technically work with marketers from around the world. So we do have to make sure that we position ourselves properly and that we carve out a place in the market that is meaningfully different to our customers. So how do win as an underdog?
What is a Blue Ocean in Business?
Number one, I have make your biggest weakness, your greatest strength.
So this is particularly applicable to people who are just getting started the market, and you look at your competition, they have more results. They’ve more experienced, a bigger team, and you might think, how am I supposed to compete against that? And to illustrate this, I want to tell you a quick story about the two different ad agencies I have hired.
Now. I am a marketer and advertiser by trade. So we generally run our own ads in house, but there’s been two times first when I was only on Facebook ads, I hadn’t yet learned YouTube.
And I hired an ad agency to run YouTube ads for me. Now this happened to be a one man shop. His name was Brandon and I worked with him for a year or two. And Brandon was awesome. Uh, he was very professional. He did what he said he was going to do. He had solid reporting every week and he really got my foot in the door on YouTube ads.
Um, we eventually parted ways because I decided I just wanted to go all in on YouTube and learn it myself and blow it up. And no one’s going to care about my business more than me, but Brandon did a great job. Now there’s been another time where I hired a Facebook ads agency to run my ads. And this was primarily because I was too busy to do them myself. And it was getting really tedious.
I’d been doing it for a couple of years. I just wasn’t in the mood to keep doing it. Now, this agency was a very big, well known Facebook ads agency. They had a massive team, a great reputation in the marketplace and they charged absurd prices, but I wanted to hire the best. And so I put down the money and I hired them anyways.
Now I can tell you, this agency was very good at reporting. They were very good at client communication. They made me have twice a week meetings with them to make sure that I was up to date. And they even sent me a gift in the mail when I signed up with them, which actually really pissed me off. And I’m going to tell you why, because this company was great at all the things they needed to be good at, except for the one thing that actually mattered.
And what was that getting results? And it’s because they were so mired in their systems and their process that you couldn’t just talk to a human being and say, listen, these ads suck and they’re not beating our control ads. So what am I even paying you for?
We’re paying for all the support staff for all these useless meetings and for this ad copy that won’t even outperform my own. I ended up spending about $7,500 with this agency and getting absolutely nothing in return. So you can see right there, we’re looking at a one man shop Brandon, who was just a great experience to work with great guy.
I would recommend them to anybody who wants to run YouTube ads and a giant agency with a great reputation and a huge team and way more resources and a proven track record who got me absolutely zero results for $7,500.
Now you might look at that big agency and say, I could never compete with that person. And you might get on a phone with a client, have a sales call. And they say, how do you compare it to these big agencies? You don’t want to position yourself against them. You don’t want to say I’m just as good as that agency. You want to say I’m different.
Do you want to make your biggest weakness that you are small and new, your strength? You say, I will give you what the agency won’t. I actually care about your success, not just bringing you on as another client. I will actually take the time to care about your situation. And I will work my ass off to make your ads work because my business depends on it. And that’s how you have to position yourself. Never deny your situation.
Never talk to that customer on the phone, who says you’re big. You’re just starting out. You’re not like the big agencies. Don’t say, yeah, that’s a bad thing. You have to lean into that. Embrace it as a good thing. Your biggest weakness is always going to be your biggest strength, whatever that is. So just double down on whatever it is.
You can offer that your competitors. Don’t the way that you figured this out is just by studying their weaknesses, go into the market and find out people that are already working with the big players. What do they hate about working with them? And if we’re talking about ad agency, ad agencies here, we’re talking about running ads for clients. I don’t know if I’ve ever met anybody. Who’s worked at the big agency. Who’s gotten good results. They just, they just do the bare minimum to get the client up and running on ads.
And they never actually have campaigns that perform. I think they just do best working with products that are incredibly easy to sell. Like big brands. All you have to do is post pictures. And one line of copy and that big brand is going to sell because they have a reputation in the marketplace and they have a product that is easily understood. These big ad agencies. They never get results for the smaller businesses who actually have some complexity in the product they’re offering.
So right there, you can outperform any big brand, even if you’re brand new to the business, by just caring more about the client and showing them that you can actually give them personal attention, that they will not get from the big company and at a much greater value, right? Like I paid Brandon, I think 10% of ad spend. And I paid this other firm, $7,500 and got nothing.
So one is performance based and one is just me taking money out of my pocket, bringing a lighter and just lightening up money on fire and not being able to do anything about it. So rule number one to out compete in your competition, even if you’re small and the intimidate you is lean into your weaknesses and make that your biggest selling point. If you’re small and you’re worried about it, make that your biggest selling point, that you’re smaller than the competition.
What is a Business Niche?
Number two to outperform the competition is to niche down is a very, very hard to be the best in the world at something. If you want to go out there and be the best in the world at Facebook ads or YouTube ads, that’s going to be pretty difficult. You’re competing with everybody on a global scale, as we’ve said, you know, it’s not very hard to do, be the best in the world at the intersection of two things,
I’ll use my own business. I’ll use the work from anywhere accelerator. As an example here, it would be very hard to be the best in the world at a Facebook ads course to go out there and say, we have the best Facebook ads course, but I can be the best at a Facebook ads course that also focuses on the ability to travel around the world.
I’ve instantly set myself apart. I’ve instantly differentiated myself and I no have to compete to be the best, but just compete to be different. So there’s a phrase that I love only is better than best. That means don’t try to be better than the competition. Try to be different and sell on your differences. Now, if you’re still not getting this, it’s an example I use often. It’s very easy to understand. Let’s say that you go into the dentist market as a Facebook ads, advertiser, and you want to sell funnels to dentists.
Thus can be pretty difficult to compete in right with all the saturation, but let’s say you niche down one step further and you say, I want to go after a holistic dentist. Then it’s going to be a lot easier to be the best in the world at serving only holistic dentists. And you’re competing on your differences. So you should try to be the biggest fish in the smallest pond. When you are starting out, as you begin to grow, you can move to a bigger pond.
You don’t want to be the biggest fish in the smallest pond forever, but you absolutely do on day one. So you can be able to do that by hyper niching or combining two to three things that you are good at. That’s going to instantly set you apart only is better than best.
How to Bond with Your Audience
Number three, how to beat the competition. Use story. A lot of big brands are terrible at using story. And story is something that our brains can grab onto and bond with. And this is a really important concept is you actually want your audience to bond with you as a friend. And that’s why video works so well. Like you sitting here watching me on video, it probably feels like you know me a little bit.
And if you saw me in the street, you would probably feel like we know each other, but chances are, if I’ve never met you in real life or talk to you and you’re not a client, I don’t actually know you yet. It feels like we’re having a two way conversation. And so one of the ways we get people to bond with us and to know us is by telling stories. And when we tell those stories, they get a little insight into our character, into our lives.
They start to trust us and there’ll be more likely to do business with us. So if we have a really strong story and you know, we love this in celebrities, we love this. And the media, the media is great at telling stories. That’s what we connect with. And we have a really strong story. It’s going to be a lot easier for us to beat big brands. Okay?
How to Create a Competitive Moat
Number four, I have create a competitive moat. So there’s this phenomenon in the beginner business world where people want to go out there and they want to get the most amount of results for the least amount of work as fast as possible. And this is what keeps most people stuck is they’re always looking for the easy way out. So the first thing you should do is stop looking for the easy way out. Don’t leave a niche just because it has problems. I see this all the time. There’s people starting to niche.
Maybe they start in real estate and they say, Oh yeah, well the real estate niche sucks because the agents are rude or there’s too many beginners. Or, and they come up with all these problems, why this niche sucks. And I don’t think you have to guess too hard to guess that I’m going to say there are problems in every niche and what you actually get paid for is solving those problems.
And we actually want to solve them in a way where we have, what’s called a competitive moat. This means we’re going to do something that is really hard for some new player to come in and replicate right away. Now this usually takes time and persist, persistence and grit and hard work. And this is why most people never form competitive modes, but I’ve done this in my business where I sit down and I say, okay, what would be amazing for the client? What would they absolutely love?
That would be really hard to do and take a lot of money and time and then write those down. And I say, okay, let’s do that. Because when that project is done in six months or in 12 months, guess what? I have something that nobody else can match. And I have, what’s called a unique selling proposition. I have a competitive advantage.
It’s something that nobody else can match that I can offer to my customers that meaningfully helps them with their problems. So that takes a little more time and you can get started with the first couple of tips that I’ve told you here, but eventually you want to build a competitive moat in your business, and that’s just going to make it so much easier to sell against the competition.
And again, if we go back to point number one here, and we just look at what the big players in the market are doing, what do they refuse to do? What do they refuse to offer to their customers? That their customers are absolutely begging for it. And you have to understand the big companies are just, they’re entrenched in systems and bureaucracy, and it’s very hard for them to move. It’s very hard for them to change product lines or their offer.
It’s very hard for them to adapt quickly. So that’s your biggest advantage as a small guy or girl is you can adapt quickly. You can move fast, you can change your product lines and your offers on the fly and you can offer what the big competitors won’t because it would just take too much red tape, too much change for them to actually accomplish that.
So go build your competitive moat by just giving your customers what they want, but can’t get it from the competition and, you know, be sure to do this, even if it takes a long time and a lot of money, even if there are very difficult problems to solve in the market, that’s what you will get paid the most amount of money for it. I mean, just look at the kind of businesses that Elon Musk starts. The competitive mode is insane with his businesses.
He takes the biggest problem he can possibly think of. And he just puts everything that he’s got into it. And he comes right to the brink of bankruptcy on these products, right? But by the time he’s actually pulled off, he has the biggest moat. You can imagine.
He’s probably going to become the richest person in the world. And it’s because he’s solved harder problems than anyone else has, or at least he’s on the path to do that. So if they’re just saying that your worth is dependent on the severity of the problems that you can solve, how hard it is to solve them and doing something that most people aren’t willing to do.
And this isn’t as hard as you might think it is because most people are not willing to work very hard. They’re not really willing to commit to something for a long period of time, and they’re not willing to engage in projects that don’t have a day one payoff.
So just do the things that are longterm that take a little to pay off, but are really meaningful to your customers. And you are going to get much better results that way. Just a quick example of this is like, uh, last year I wanted to do the a hundred funnel project where we actually funnel hack and, or have templates for over a hundred different for lead generation, because I knew this would be meaningful to my customers.
I knew they probably couldn’t get hundred funnels anywhere else. So I said to the team, let’s do the a hundred funnel project. We brought somebody on that could work in the project. It was expensive. It takes a long time, but then we have an asset that nobody else has. We can continue to offer something to our customers that nobody else can. And that’s a really easy way to compete with the competition because, you know, I might have new competitors coming into my market every day, but they can’t start a day.
One with a hundred funnels. It would take them lots of time and effort and money.
How to Outlast Your Competition
And the last thing I have on here, which is one of the most important ones is outlast the competition. And this is for a couple of different reasons. The longer you work with your market, the more you get to know them, the more you understand their unique problems and desires, and you can serve those unique problems and desires, right?
The person who can serve the customers the best at the highest level service with the greatest value for the end user is always going to win. So if we just stay in the game long enough, we’re going to become incredibly proficient at what we do. We’re going to get really good at solving our customer’s problems. We’re going to build our brand and a reputation in the marketplace. And this is a big one.
We talked about bonding before. Most people are not going to trust you. The first time they come across you, they’re going to be like, who is this weird person that I’ve never seen before? And then they see you again and they see you again. And they see you again. And they see you again. And eventually people see you so many times, they see that you’re still in the game. They begin to trust you.
They don’t doubt you as much. They’re not as skeptical. And then they start to work with you. And this is like an exponential curve, right? The longer you stay in the market, the more trust you have built, the more data you have from customers, the more testimonials you have and the bigger moat you start to build with your brand, with your reputation, with your testimonials, with your experience and with the service, you can offer your customers.
So I know this can be intimidating. Just know that any market, any niche you go into there is going to be competition. Yes, it is hard being the new player in a market. You are the underdog. You do have to be scrappy and fight hard, but just know that there are advantages to being the underdog that are meaningful to your customers and play to those advantages. Don’t avoid them. Don’t lie about your situation.
Be honest, tell the truth and use that as your strength just know that dealing with competition will make you better. It will make you stronger. It will make your business better. It will push you to outperform what you’ve done in the past. And if you’re up for the challenge, there’s no reason you can’t go into any new market and start to compete with the big players only is better than best compete on your differences. And most of all, go out there and get it to be aggressive. Don’t back down, stay the course.
And eventually you will win. Let me know in the comments, does this help with competition? Does it help with competitive problems in your marketplace, saturation being intimidated by the big players and what are you going to do about it? Let me know in the comments. I would love to hear, let me know if you want to see anything else that’s offered late. I’m Christian, the work from anywhere at digital marketing guy. I’ll see you.
