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The $100 MBA Show
MBA2242 How to Use Your Competition In Your Marketing + Free Ride Friday
00:11:16
Competition is a good thing — if you know how to use it. We often think it’d be great to be the only one selling what we’re selling.
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- [00:01]
Jim
And we're back folks. It looks like Jim from sales just got in from his client lunch and he's got receipts.
- [00:06]
Colleague
His next meeting is in two minutes. The team is asking can he get through his expenses in that time?
- [00:12]
Jim
He's going for it.
- [00:12]
Colleague
Is that his phone?
- [00:14]
Jim
He's snapping a pic. He's texting Ramp.
- [00:16]
Colleague
Jim is fast, but this is unheard of.
- [00:18]
Jim
That's it. He's done it. It's unbelievable.
- [00:21]
Ramp Ad
On ramp expenses are faster than ever. Just submit them with a text. Switch your business to ramp.com.
- [00:40]
Omar Zenhom
Hey, welcome to the hundred dollar MBA show business building goodness delivered every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company. I started my co founder back in 2014 and today's episode is Free Ride Friday. On Free R Fridays, we give away a lifetime membership to one of our programs and we're giving away the Automated webinar challenge, our 30 day course on how to build your own automated webinars to grow your leads and sales on autopilot. It retails for $499 over@webinarninja.com AWC or you can win it for free. Just leave us an Apple podcast rating and review and you enter our weekly random draw we call Free Ride Friday. Listen in on Friday just like today to see if you won. We announce this week's winner a little bit later in the episode. In today's lesson, you'll learn how to use your competition in your marketing. Ooh, I love this topic because many people have different opinions on this strategy. In today's lesson, I'm going to show you how you can use your competition and compare yourself to your competition in your marketing in a very clever and effective way. You don't even need to name them by name, but to simply ignore the fact that you have competition and your potential customer is thinking and looking and learning about your competition. It's a mistake. You have to face reality and use it to your advantage. So in today's lesson, I want to share with you some real good examples of how other businesses are using their competition in their marketing to show how they're better, what they stand for, and why you should go with them instead of the competition. I'm also going to break down the strategy so you can apply to your own business no matter what you sell. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business. 99.9% of all businesses have competition. In fact, if you have a business that has no competition, that's a hard business to have because you're selling something that your customers have no clue about. They don't know what this thing is, how it can help them. They've never seen it before. So you have to really do a lot of work to educate them. If you're first to market, a bit of competition is actually really good because it shows that this is a competitive market. People actually want what you're selling or what this product's all about, or the service. And you can differentiate yourself from the competition so that you can take a corner or a niche of the market and dominate all day long. But you might be asking, why use it in your marketing? Why even talk about your competition in your marketing? Well, it all boils down to the fact that you want to market to buyers. People that are interested in buying your products and services and people that are shopping around are aware of the competition. Think about the last time you bought something significant. A car, maybe an electronic device, a computer, a phone. Anytime you make a purchase, you're pretty aware that you have choices. Now you might be inclined to one choice versus the other. But as one of those choices, as a business owner, you need to make your customers aware of what makes you better, what makes you different. And in context of competition, in context of showing your competitors, it makes it clear you're going to lay out exactly what you're all about, what you value and what you do best, so that people that resonate with those things see that you're the clear cut choice for them. People understand things in context, they just don't understand things in a vacuum. Let me give an example. The actor Ryan Reynolds owns a mobile phone company called Mint Mobile. They have competitors like AT&T and Verizon and T Mobile, all these other cellular phone companies. Now, instead of ignoring the competition, he gets in front of them. Now, he doesn't name them by name in his ads on YouTube or on TV, but but he calls them the big wireless companies. Everybody kind of knows who the big wireless companies are, the ones that spend a lot of money on advertising and in your face and have been around forever. So he'll say things like, we're not like the big wireless companies that are trying to nickel and dime you. We don't have retail stores. That way we save money and we pass on those savings to you, the consumer. He's always referring back to the competition under the name of the big wireless companies. By doing this he's acknowledging there is competition, there are competitors, and he's also showing you the difference between them and those people. And he's not pointing anybody out by name or singling out one company. But he is showing you the advantage of going with Mint Mobile in comparison to the competition. Because people are shopping around for a wireless service, they may want to change their service or up for contract renewal, things like that. And the things that Mint Mobile stands for is what they actually are attracted to, whether it's savings, the data limits, all that kind of stuff. Another very strong example was around the early 2000s. Apple computers wanted to show people the difference between a Mac computer and a PC. And they had these funny, quirky commercials where they had two people representing both Mac and PC. There was a young man who was kind of hip and fun and he was representing a Mac. He would say, I'm a Mac. And the second guy was a middle aged, kind of nerdy, not so cool guy and he would represent the PC and say, I'm a PC. So again, Apple is not naming names, right? They're not naming actual brand names of PCs. They're just saying everybody who's not a Mac or Windows based computer. And they would have these funny commercials kind of comparing the two. What the Mac can do and what the PC can do, what the Mac was good at, what the PC was not so good at, and even sometimes what PC's good at. So it seemed a bit fair. And from the consumer's point of view, they can easily see, oh, okay, they're learning about the Mac computer. They're learning that, okay, this is what the Mac is good for, this is what the Mac is like. And they also have that brand affinity with Mac now because they're not afraid to kind of poke some fun and have a little bit of banter and create a creative ad. So how do you do this in your own business? Well, you got to think about your position in the market. What position do you hold? For example, in my business, my software company, Webinar Ninja, we just released a new software called Course Ninja, a sister product that helps you run live courses. Our positioning in the market is that you can run and sell and deliver all your live courses with one tool. While other software are kind of lying to you, they're not telling you the truth, that you're going to need some other tools to actually pull this off properly, to run it, to sell it, to have live streaming video, to record that video, to provide that in a membership area for your students. So our Positioning is an in one tool. So it's easy for us to position and say our competitors or the other tools claim to be all in one. But in fact, you're going to need all these other things. You need to buy these other software tools to make it all work with us. You don't need to do that. It's all in one place. Once you know your positioning, it's easy for you to compare yourself to the competition and use that in your marketing. And the way I see this is just laying out the facts, right? Educating your potential customer about their purchase, about, hey, you're going to be shopping around. You're looking for this solution, whatever you offer. And this is what I offer. And this is why it's different or better than some of the other solutions out there. And you could do this in your Facebook ads. You can do this on your social media posts. You could do this on your sales pages. You could do this through email nurturing sequences. This is content that people actually want to read about and know about and watch videos about because it actually it helps them make a decision. It unblocks a lot of things in their head. And this is why using competition or your competitors in your marketing actually converts very high. Because you're kind of going straight to it. You're cutting to the chase, right? You're kind of just saying, hey, I know you're shopping around. I know you have options. Here's how we compare. Sort of like a shopper's guide. But this is very hard to do if you don't have proper positioning where you don't know clearly how you are different from your competition. So establishing that is the most important thing. This will allow you then to say, hey, we are great at this, unlike the other people over here.
- [08:55]
Jim
And we're back, folks. It looks like Jim from sales just got in from his client lunch and he's got receipts.
- [09:01]
Colleague
His next meeting is in two minutes. The team is asking, can he get through his expenses in that time?
- [09:06]
Jim
He's going for it.
- [09:07]
Colleague
Is that his phone?
- [09:08]
Jim
He's snapping a pick. He's texting around.
- [09:10]
Colleague
Jim is fast, but this is unheard of.
- [09:12]
Jim
That's it. He's done it. It's unbelievable.
- [09:15]
Ramp Ad
On ramp, expenses are faster than ever. Just submit them with a text. Switch your business to ramp.com.
- [09:27]
Omar Zenhom
Now. Here's the secret to why using competition in your marketing really works. Remember, I said the story is quite engaging and it's content that people want to read or listen to or watch. If it's a video, well, it's because it's a running theme. It's a running story that we've known since the beginning of time. It gets people excited to know that there's something out there that's not for us but is against us. The idea of a prince protecting his castle or a hero protecting the city from the dragon. Even though most of life is in the gray area. Right. And it's not so binary as human beings, it's just easy for us to think good versus evil, right versus wrong, us versus them. Now, I'm not saying you bash your competition. No. But you do point out the difference that this is what we're all about. This is what they're all about. So if you're with our movement, if you're with what we are all about, then come and join us. This is a message that has been repeated over time for centuries. This is just part of our tradition as a human species. And this is why it's a clear message when you're marketing thanks so much for listening to the $100 NBA show. If you love what you hear, let us know by subscribing. By following to the show. Just hit the triple dots in Apple podcasts, Spotify and hit follow. So that makes sure that you get the next episode automatically. 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. Ritz202. Ritz202 says Amazing Lessons 5 stars. Quick, easy to follow, insightful advice. Highly Recommend. Well, thanks, ritz202 for that amazing review. Your mission is to email me over at omar00mba net so we can hook you up with the lifetime memberships to the automated webinar challenge. If you want to win a free ride, just go ahead and leave us an Apple podcast rating and review and you enter our weekly random draw. And you're in the draw until you win. So drop us a review and listen in on Friday to see if you won. That simple. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. When you're comparing yourself to the competition, you don't need to be nasty, you don't need to be rude, you can be respectful, and you can keep it light. The best way I've seen this done is through humor. Just like the examples I mentioned with Mint Mobile and Apple. With humor, you can kind of get away with a lot and at the same time, it's all tongue in cheek and all in the spirit of good fun and healthy competition. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll check you in Monday's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.
- [12:20]
Jim
And we're back, folks. It looks like Jim from Snails just got in from his client lunch and he's got receipts.
- [12:26]
Colleague
His next meeting is in two minutes. The team is asking, can he get through his expenses in that time?
- [12:31]
Jim
He's going for it.
- [12:32]
Colleague
Is that his phone?
- [12:33]
Jim
He's snapping a pic. He's texting Ramp.
- [12:35]
Colleague
Jim is fast, but this is unheard of.
- [12:37]
Jim
That's it. He's done it. It's unbelievable.
- [12:40]
Ramp Ad
On Ramp, expenses are faster than ever. Just submit them with a text. Switch your business to ramp.com.