MBA1832 Small Changes to Stand Out From The Competition + Free Ride Friday

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Hey O. Welcome to the Hundred Dollar MBA show because as a business owner you'll take all the help you can get. That's why we deliver daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar is at home. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started back in 2014 with my business partner and today is Free Ride Friday. Make sure you hang on to the end of the episode to hear who won this week's Free Ride. If you want to win a free ride to one of our programs, go ahead and leave us an Apple podcast rating and review and you enter our weekly random draw. Listen in on Friday to see if you won. That simple. It's our way to say thanks for showing us love on Apple Podcasts. In today's lesson you will learn what are some small changes you can make to stand out from the competition. I am no stranger to competition. I run a webinar software company. Webinars became all the rage had during the pandemic and post pandemic in the new normal and I've learned a few things that you can do in your own business to stand out from competition. These techniques will allow you to get more customers that are more aligned with what you can actually do for them. So they're happier, they stay longer and they tell other people this in a way, future proofs your business from being gobbled up by the competition. In fact, they'll want to acquire you one day. These are small, simple things that you can actually implement this week, this month that can make all the difference. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

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Before we talk about the strategies and what are some things you can do to differentiate from the competition, let's talk about differentiation and how different do you need to be? Really? Too many people try to compete on features, on price. Take it from me, this is a losing battle. Never, ever try to go tit for tat on features or try to undercut the competition in price. In fact, it's actually better to be more expensive than cheaper than the competition to keep your business sustainable. Differences are all about nuances. They're all about talking to specific people, providing specific products, services, and how you deliver them that has you stand out from the crowd. So you really don't need to do something totally brand new. You don't have to be so innovative where they're like, wow, never heard of this before. You can in fact take something from a different market, from a different business, and apply it to your own business and add a differentiator to your offer, to your product, to your services. I want to go through four areas where you can tweak, change, modify, and really differentiate from the competition. Number one, who you serve. This is one of the easiest things you can do. But so many entrepreneurs, so many business owners do not do this. And that is serving a particular market, a particular audience in your marketplace. So, for example, webinar software. Who can use webinar software? Well, anybody online, really. Anybody who wants to do anything like a virtual meeting or class. It's a huge market. If I'm trying to tackle that whole market, that is not going to make me different. I'm not going to talk to anybody specifically. So one of the things we did a few years back is really what they call niche down. But what I like to say is I like to focus, focus on who I want to serve. Just because you focus and talk directly to a specific group of people, it doesn' mean you cannot sell to other people. Doesn't mean that other people outside that group are not going to buy. It just means that you're going to resonate strongly with these people and the values you hold or the values you share with these people. So in this big market of anybody who can create webinars, let's niche down well, let's say business owners. Well, that's still not niche enough. There's big businesses, there's enterprise businesses, there's Fortune 500s, there are small businesses, there are mom and pop businesses, there are businesses that are brick and mortar. So let's niche down even more. Well, there are just online businesses, but that's not niche enough yet still. There's software businesses, there's e commerce. So we niche down even further. And we are a webinar software for teachers, trainers, creators, people that teach something, that share something for a living. That's what they do. Whether they're teaching people how to homeschool their kids or they're an economist and they're teaching economics or they're teaching Pilates from their home studio. That is a very niche, niche group. But the market's big enough for me to be able to serve them and have a thriving business. So we changed all our marketing, all our branding, all our messaging on our website, on our materials to reflect that, and it made all the difference. That's the key word. I am different now from my competition because I focus on these people. So those people are going to feel like I the best solution because I am building a solution for them, not for everybody. So the first category was who you serve. The second category, where you can differentiate is how you serve, how you deliver your product or service. If your competition is doing everything self serve, why don't you do white glove service, get on a phone call with people onboard them. You might have to charge more, but, but it will make you different. Having exceptional customer support, 24,7 customer support, phone support, whatever it is, how you deliver your product, how you deliver your service can be different. And therefore people will come to you because they want to be served that way. The third way you can differentiate is with your pricing. Now, I'm not talking about trying to undercut your competition. I'm talking about how you offer your product or service. Every business has a value metric. For example, with my software, webinar Ninja, our value metric is the number of attendees on the webinar. The more attendees the higher the plan. You might be selling an online course and you have a few tiers of your course and every time you go up tier and it gets more expensive, you add more content, you add more videos or maybe even calls, but your competition is already doing that. So you can change the way you offer your product or service with your pricing, meaning, or your packaging, I should say, and flip, flip the script. Maybe your most expensive product or version of your course is the shortest version, the fastest one, the fast track. Meaning they can do a self study course or you can tell them, hey, let's do a crash course live on a series webinar over the course of three days. That three day live course is three times as much as a self study course. That may take you three weeks. People will pay for brevity. People will pay to get things done and get skilled up quickly. So you can differentiate by just offering a different way of offering your product, pricing it in a different way. Don't just say, hey, more content means more money. What are the other factors involved? How long it takes for them to consume this knowledge or to gain that skill? Get creative in your pricing and packaging. Number four. The fourth way you can differentiate from the competition in a very easy and subtle way is, is your branding. And when I say branding, I mean your style. If your competition are all buttoned up or all super professional or handing out white papers on their website, go the other way. Be fun, be creative, be funny. You're going to get a lot of people that are sick of that way, the stuffiness of the competition and they're going to be finding you refreshing. You're going to get some people and think, hey, you're not professional just because you're having a bit of fun on your website, but you don't need them. You need to differentiate and find your people. Wistia is a great example of this, which is a video hosting service. They have a lot of fun on their website in their office, they share fun videos, they have great content versus their competition, which is Vimeo, which is very buttoned up. It's a very high brow, artsy fartsy. And guess what, Wistia is a whole lot more expensive. But people love the brand and therefore they're like, hey, I love what this company is doing, I want to be a part of it, even if it's just being a customer. So your branding can really differentiate you if you go the other way and stand out from the crowd.

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To wrap up today's episode, there are four ways you can differentiate from the competition. And you can implement these as quickly as this week, this month. One, who you serve, two, how you serve them. Three, your pricing and packaging, and four, your branding. Now, there are other ways, of course, you could differentiate with your actual product, with your actual service, your associations. Maybe you sponsor somebody who's semi famous, but I'm talking about things that you can change immediately. Some tweaks you can do to really start differentiating those things take a little bit more time. And here on the Hunter LB show, we're all about action. We want you to take action with what we teach every day so that you can start seeing some results. You can start seeing a difference in your business. To us, that's what we want to do. We want to help you actually see results. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. Today's episode's not over, though. It's Free Ride Friday. Let's see who won this week's Free Ride. And the winner is. Xthermix. Xtermix says very practical. Five stars. Much better than any guru you see on the Internet. Gurus that teach you can get rich in no time. Short and practical. This is the best podcast I've listened to. If you're interested in starting your own business or taking it to the next level. Thanks, Xthermics, for that awesome, awesome review. Your mission is seemingly@omar mba.net you won the free ride to Ezcours. Go ahead to Ezcourse Co. You can check it out. It's a $500 online course on how to build your own online course in 30 days. But today Exterminex won it for free. You can win it for free as well. Just leave us an Apple podcast rating and review and you enter a weekly random draw. Listen in on Friday to see if you won. That simple. Thanks so much for listening to the show. Make sure you hit that subscribe button so you don't miss an episode. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Remember that first point about who you serve, mastering or really taking over a niche in the market, A specific group of people. This makes your company a whole lot more valuable. Your competition will feel like, man, I want to get in on that group of people, but it's totally taken over by you. So what do you think those big businesses do when that happens? Well, most of them will make you an offer to buy you out. A pretty sweet exit deal is not something that most people get. And because you differentiated, you may get that opportunity. So do it. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in Monday's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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