Navigating Competitive Markets with Creative Tactics
Most business and marketing strategies frame “the competition” as the other people in your category who sell the same thing you do.
What are “they” doing?
They just took two of our clients
They just announced a new name and logo
They have a better reputation
They added new products
They just launched a new service
It’s easy to become obsessed with “they.”
Overcoming marketplace noise.
Marketplace clutter (Neumeier, Zag) takes five forms...
Product clutter: For example in just the category of books, over 2,700 new titles published each day.
Feature clutter: Apple's product page for the new iPhone shows over 54 features.
Advertising clutter: We are bombarded by over 3,000 marketing messages each day, yet we can't process more than 100.
Message clutter: When businesses don’t focus on their strongest benefits and clutter their communication with every possible detail.
Media clutter: all the places you experience advertising (radio, TV, billboard, websites, social apps, search platforms, and more).
Capturing customer attention in a distracted market.
Your audience faces so many choices they often give up or stick with the status quo. They deal with the clutter (the products, the features, the ads, and all the messages) by building mental barriers to block it all out.
So how can we squeeze through the clutter-barrier our audiences have made?
Innovative thinking is the key to success.
To stand out from the clutter, we have to stop offering "more" and start offering "different." The old game of differentiation—new features, new color, lower price, higher speed—is easy to copy and follow.
So in an era of extreme clutter, you can't just be different, you have to be radically different. You have to zag when the competition zigs.
Radical differentiation is about finding a whole new market space you can own and defend. Radical differentiation gets more customers to buy more things for more years at a higher price.
Find your zag: the path to a unique value proposition.
To find a zag, start with a few basic premises:
Find what's missing.
Consider your market. What's missing? Explore bold and scary ideas. Sticky notes (Post-Its) and DVDs by mail (Netflix) are great examples of scary ideas that created completely new market spaces. What's missing can be an entirely new service or just a way to provide an already existing service. The point is: don't play it safe—think different.
Find new ways to help.
Look for a job that people are already trying to get done and then help them do it. The trick here isn't to think "products" it's to think "tribe." What tribe is struggling and needs help? What tribes are growing? Find out what they want, and give them it to it.
Pay attention to trends.
The subscription economy, hyper-personalization, organic living, ESG awareness and more offer new and desired ways people want to be served. Start with your focus, add your radical differentiation, and then get in front of trends. It's a formula for your zag.
A pivotal strategy for growth.
As a business leader, you face two paths. One direction feels safe. You follow the competition. You fight for scraps. You don’t consider that bold idea that’s tickling the back of your mind. This path is hard work that never lets up.
In the other direction is the path few people take. A path less charted. It’s uncertain. It’s reserved for those willing to take the risk on their bold idea and create a new market space. It’s the path where impact and treasure are found.
Zag, my friend. I promise it will reward you.
