Beat the Giant

You might think it sounds crazy that you are able to beat a huge competitor while you are just a newcomer.

Well, I say you’re right if you were entering a ‘brick-and-mortar’ market. Why? Let me explain to you.

In a physical industry, big firms have advantage over small firms due to the ‘economic of scale’ which allows them to have a huge amount of production at a low cost. This gives big firms a power to reduce the cost of their products, and when the big firms do reduce the cost of their products, the small firms are also forced to lower their products’ prices as well in order to not lose consumers. However, small firms can only lower prices of their products to a certain level where they cannot lower anymore or they will start making a loss and eventually go bankrupt. Because of this, it is relatively easy for big firms to run smaller firms out of the competition simply by outlasting them.

However, the law of ‘economic of scale’ does not apply for online business as it involves the selling of  digital products where there is no cost to mass produce the products. We only spend money for product creation the first time, and then any copies we make of it to sell are then of zero cost to us as it just involves copy and paste of the digital product.

So, how should you go about beating the giant?
There is one surefire way to beat the giant competitor in order to dominate the market, and that is to make yourself, your products and services more attractive than the competitors services or products.

Since you are a newcomer, you have not made any impression on your potential customer. This can be used to your advantage if you give off a good image of your business the first time round. To do this, you have to create a good introduction of your products or services through various ways like:

• Create a “Unique and Irresistible” product

  By creating a unique product/service which has a special advantage over your competitor product/service, you are making yourself more attractive to potential customers than your competitor.

• Create a “Unique and Irresistible” offer

  You may do so by giving a special introductory promotion  price on your services or products. In fact, you might even give away your services and products to a limited number of people and then later ask them for a honest opinion and testimonial for the product. This testimonial can then work as a catalyst  to  help expose your services or products to the market  and helps it gain credibility in no time.

• Be Aggressive!

  If you want to beat a giant, you should be aggresive. You have to be prepared to do an aggressive marketing campaign which although will cost quite a bit  of money, will help your potential clients know  that you really think your products  or services are worth spending the money to promote.
  Yes, beating the giant is something possible. However, there is  always the possibility that the gaint competitor might fight back, in which case you might get burnt.

Befriend the Giant

This approach may sound easy and too simple. However, not many people realizes the power of befriending giants. I will talk more about this in my next entry, in the mean time, just know that there are 2 ways to dominate a market. And if you haven’t read the affiliate marketing jargon that all affiliates should know about, I strongly suggest you read it.

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1. All Successful Business Starts With A Market Research On an isolated island of Jamaica, lives a young boy....

First of all, there are 3 steps you need to follow (This is just a rough guideline):

1. Ask yourself questions!

   Before doing anything, pondering is often the best way to focus your mind on the right track and direction.

   These are a few questions you may ask yourself which will help you succeed in affiliate marketing:

   a. What do you like to do? (hobby)

   b. What are you interested in?

   c. Do many people have the same interest as yours?

   d. Is your interest valuable? (Is able to become income generating)

2. Open your eyes and your ears wide. Check every corner!

   If you are going to discover something, be sensible!

   Check everything around you; magazines, TV, newspaper, classified ads.

   Take note of the topics which are discussed regularly.

   Also do check online medias such as blogs, forum, myspace, youtube, etc.

   Topics that are presented regularly are those with a huge demand from the market and thus a better market to go in. If let say you like sports, then tune on to the sports channel or read sports magazines more often. Check what kinds of sports are popular or what kind of food supplements sportsmen prefer.

   Another example is, tuning to a talk show like Oprah Winfrey. Listen carefully to what the show is talking about, a talk show like Oprah usually discusses a specific topic about problems faced by people today. This might be a profitable market that you might like to go into.

   Classified ads in magazines are also a good place to determine how popular a market is. You will discover that there are many different sizes of advertisement posted on the magazines; the advertisement might be half page, full page or a quarter page. The bigger the size and the more strategic the location of the advertisement in a magazine, the bigger and more competitive the existing market. This simply means that revenue generated by the industry is higher than other industries, and therefore the company that posted the advertisement is willing to pay higher prices for the advertisement spot.

3. Validate the market!

   So once you have discovered a market which you are interested in and that has a high demand, you must now validate and check that the market is really profitable and in high demand. To check whether a market is really in high demand, you can check the popularity of the keywords (the amount of times the keywords are searched) online by using keyword tracker tools.

   Here are a few keyword tracker tools:

   • 1.WordTracker
   • 2. Google Keyword tool
   • 3. Good Keywords Tool

If you are satisfied with the number of times the keywords are searched and that you are genuinely interested in the market, then that market is the market for you.

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From this short story we may learn how important is to do a market research. Many people do just like what Bruce did. They often ignore where and when to enter a market. In order to build a prosperous online business, you have to know exactly what market, who are you targeting, where and when to influence the market.

Do not be misled! You might find a very profitable market out there yet you still cannot ignore other fundamentals you need before establishing a business upon a niche. There are 3 critical questions you have to answer before you decide your niche market:

• Have you any interest or affinity in the said market?

  Affinity/interest is ‘the key’ which determines how far you are going to succeed in your industry. Without any interest in the industry you are working on, you will eventually find out that the job becomes boring and soon you lose motivation to go on. If you have no interest in a particular market, do not enter it! Otherwise, you might not have the creativity in order to gain a breakthrough in your industry.

• Is the market profitable?

  It is sad thing when someone fails to achieve his goal. It is more sad when someone who achieves his goal just to find out his goal is useless or simply a big waste of time. Well, you have to keep in mind as every entrepreneur does, that our focus in doing online business is to make profits! If you spend much a lot of time and money conquering a unprofitable market, you would have just been wasting your time and money when you could have otherwise entered into a profitable market and have start earning some serious cash. I cannot stress the importance and usefulness of doing a careful research on the market you intend to enter before you enter it and then find out that the ‘goldmine’ is empty. By then it would have been too late.

• Can you dominate the market?

  If you have found a profitable market, please do not get too excited and count your eggs before they have hatched. Remember, where there is sugar, there will be ants! Once you have determined a profitable market, you then have to check on your competition in that market. The third step determines whether your business can grow or not, and not simply ‘survive’. Make assumptions and calculations whether or not you are able to penetrate the market within a period of time. You can do these by typing the keywords of your market on search engine and check websites or blogs which appear as a result of your search.

  Sometimes you might find a market which has ‘zero’ competition. Well it means there are 2 assumptions: it is a ‘newfound’ goldmine or it is an ‘empty’ goldmine. If it is a competitive one, you need to prepare yourself to be able to penetrate the market under a certain period of time. Set the time, if you fail to do so within the time limit, then you may want to reconsider your choice and choose a different market.

Market research is something extremely important that has to be done before you start any of your projects or your new business as after doing market research, you can determine whether it is worth it to go into a particular market. If the market is profitable, by doing market research you would also be better able to devise a strategy to dominate said market.

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