e-Course Day 15 Email
SUBJECT: [DIY Marketing] Are You a First-Mover or a Fast-Follower?
Hello! We’re on to day 15 of our 30 day entrepreneurs
30 day DIY marketing e-course. (We’re catching up…)
Oh, and if you just signed up, you can see the course info we’ve
already covered right here:
http://www.diymarketingmonth.com/e-course-email-recap/
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“We want to be a fast follower but we want to be prudent, and given
how quickly this market is shifting, we’re just going to make sure
we know where the fire is before we jump off the cliff.”
– Jack Cassidy (President & CEO of Cincinnati Bell Inc.)
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When you’re an Entrepreneur at the helm of a large enterprise or a
solopreneur operation, there are few things that hit you right in
the gut like seeing a direct competitor market an idea, product or
service before you do. Man, that just kills me…especially when
our announcement/press release/launch was just around the corner.
After you step back from the emotional reaction to a competitor
besting your marketing efforts by taking the first-mover advantage
you might find some consolation in the fact that the real norm for
first-movers is actually failure.
Xerox and their PARC research facility has had dozens of
breakthrough innovations throughout the years that they’ve never
capitalized on.
Apple was the first-mover in the PDA industry in 1993 with the
Newton, but was teetering on bankruptcy withing a few years as HP
and Palm ramped the PDA market up to over $1B.
On the flip side, Apple’s resurgence in recent years has come not
from radical first-mover innovations but from incremental improvements
on MP3 players (iPod), smart phones (iPhone), and laptops (MacBooks).
Google has never actually produced a truly radical innovation. They’ve
exploited the ‘fast-follower’ strategy to become the most successful
Internet company.
The lesson here is that your marketing, like the innovation examples
above, can benefit from pursuing a fast-follower strategy. You don’t
have to come up with every new breakthrough idea to catapult your
company to new heights. In fact, as a DIY marketing entrepreneur,
you’d be considered foolish in some circles for not ‘creatively
borrowing’ from your competitors and peers in other your industry
and in other industries.
Here are a few great things about being a fast-following marketer:
1. The market size for laggards and late-adopters is usually much
larger than the market for early-adopters. Target your marketing
to the needs of the former and let your competitors spin their
wheels on trying to educate the early-adopters.
2. You can – through customer conversations, online tools and
social media – listen in on the conversation taking place about a
competitor’s marketing activities and immediately adapt those free
learnings into your marketing.
3. Network effects – Also called network externalities, which is
the phenomenon of customers placing value on an idea in proportion
to the number of people they see using it. Thing DVDs, Starbucks and
other things that require a ‘me-too’ market to scale up. Your
marketing can take advantage of the “let someone else try it first”
approach and hit consumers right when they are starting to see an
idea everywhere.
***** ACTION SUMMARY *****
1. For the rest of the month, take careful note of those competitor
activities that cause that “damn, I wish I’d have thought of that”
reaction and write them down in your marketing idea notebook.
(You do have a marketing idea notebook, don’t you?)
2. Look at all of the ‘first-mover’ marketing tactics, campaigns
and strategies that your competitors are using. Brainstorm a few
ideas on each concept that you can use to incrementally improve
on their idea and leverage it gain market share. Ask the question:
“If I were to do that better, how would I approach it?”
3. Pick one recent competitor campaign/idea that you’ve brainstormed
on and execute it ASAP. Test, measure, adjust and move forward knowing
that they’ve done the heavy lifting and you’re reaping the benefits!
***** RESOURCES *****
Guy Kawasaki has some wonderful books on how to outsmart your
competitors. Here are a few that I recommend.
>> Rules For Revolutionaries
>> Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging,
and Outmarketing Your Competition
>> How to Drive Your Competition Crazy: Creating Disruption for
Fun and Profit
Well, that’s all for now. Be on the lookout for next lesson
tomorrow.
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If you would like to learn more about MarketingSavant’s marketing
strategy, thought leadership or social media services, where you
work directly with me to build your business through strategic
marketing, go to:
http://www.marketingsavant.com/diymarketing
I’ve created a special set of offerings just for DIY Marketing
e-course members.
And, as always… think big and market well!
Yours truly,
Dana VanDen Heuvel
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MarketingSavant(TM)
Leading Through Thought
Social Media // Thought Leadership Marketing
www.marketingsavant.com
dana@marketingsavant.com
Twitter: danavan
888-989-7771
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