by: AskPat 976 Episode Transcript
Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 976 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always, I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions five days a week.
All right, now here is today's question from Ros.
Ros: Hi Pat, this is Ros from MPresta.com. I am calling you from Montreal and I am a multimedia adviser, which means that I help entrepreneurs like me think about their business, how to find their—I mean define their ideal client, and most importantly how to start a first website and social media pack.
So my question here is, how would you differentiate yourself from your competitors? Because every time I go and see other companies who do, you know, just multimedia services, I can sometimes feel overwhelmed by all the competition. There's a lot of them, and I'm always thinking about the best way to do things differently, just to add this little something that would make me different. First of all, what I thought is just aiming for only entrepreneurs like myself because I can maybe easily understand them and know how to talk to them, but even like this, I'm really thinking about how to do the right thing. So if you have any idea about this, thank you very much, and thank you also for everything you do. We really appreciate it, especially your Instagram stories that I guess make us feel a little bit closer, and we get this trust that is obvious. So thank you for everything. Bye.
Pat Flynn: Hey Ros, thank you so much for the question, I appreciate this. There are a number of ways to differentiate yourself from your competitors. You hinted at one of them and that is your niche, so you said selecting and focusing on entrepreneurs that are just like yourself, that's essentially niche-ing down and as they say: The riches are in the niches, although you sound maybe European so maybe you say, “nee-ches”, and the riches are in the “nee-ches” doesn't sound as cool. But you get the point. You can select a niche and become that expert who helps that niche only, and you can become known for that. Yes, it's a narrower target in terms of the number of people and the population that you can serve, but because there are less people who are competitors serving that particular crowd only—and I would say try to define “entrepreneurs like you” a little bit better. What does that mean, entrepreneurs like you? How can you find those people? What keywords are they typing? Where do they hang out? Where are their communities? That's what you need to figure out. So niche-ing down is number one and I feel like that's the best way to differentiate yourself, it's just to say, “Hey you know what, I'm going to be the specialty in this.”
It's like when you go to the mall and you see shoe stores. There's all different kinds of shoe stores, each one has their own specialty. If I'm a runner, I'm going to go to the running shoe store, I'm not going to go into, first of all, the walking shoe store. I'm not going to go into the casual shoe store, I'm going to go into the running shoe store. But hey, they have running shoes at the large big box retailers too, but you know what, I'm a serious runner and I'm going to get running advice from people where I know that all they talk about and focus on is running. So be that kind of service if you choose to go down that route.
There are other ways to differentiate yourself too, for example, speed. Maybe your competitors offer the service in a week and you happen to do it in four days. That could be a differentiator too. Although, please don't just go fast to go fast; still have quality stuff there because you can go as quick as you'd like to help serve others—if it's not quality stuff it's not going to really matter and it might hurt you more than anything.
Speaking of quality, that is another differentiator. Maybe you actually take a little bit more time, but you know what, that's what makes you and what you are offering unique. “Hey you know what, our competitors do this in seven days, but we do it in fourteen and here's why. It's not because we're slow, but it's because we're meticulous. We are detailed, and we want to make sure everything we do for you is as perfect as it can be. So sure, you can go to the competitors, you can go get their service done in seven days, but you're going to spend twenty-one more days afterwards fixing all the things that went wrong. Work with us, get everything you need done in two weeks and you can be sure that there will not be any changes needed. And if they are, they will be on us.” That's one way to frame it.
Another way to differentiate yourself are the recommendations that come from others, so having specific testimonials from influencers that are known in the space. If you have an influencer recommend your product and other ones do not—or excuse me, they don't recommend other products—well then that's going to immediately differentiate your product too. So it may be worth getting involved with an influencer in a space that you're in, it might tie also into that more narrow space that you're targeting based on what we said initially, “the riches are in the niches”, but either way, you could offer to do your service for free for those people to get noticed, to get recommended by them, and that's going to help you differentiate as well.
Then finally, you even said this yourself about me and my Instagram stories, “Hey that makes you more personable. We trust you more because of your Instagram stories.” Are you doing that? Because that's going to help you stand out, because nothing helps you stand out more than just being you. Because nobody is like you, nobody has your stories or experience, or your take on the space that you're in, or life in general. So putting more of you and your personality into your brand, and sharing a little bit of the stuff that happens behind the scenes like I do, that's going to help you differentiate yourself too.
So there you go Ros, I hope that helps you. You can take one, and or all of those pieces of advice, and they will be helpful for you. And of course I want to send you an AskPat teeshirt for having your question featured here on the show.
Now for those of you listening, if you have a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show as well, just head on over to AskPat.com and you can ask right there on that page. Thank you so much for listening in today, I appreciate you. We have a clue coming up in a few episodes, so I know maybe it's been a while since a clue has come up, and if you don't know what I'm talking about, go back to Episode 900 and you'll hear about what this clue and contest drawing thing is all about. So check that out, but anyway that's coming soon, but for now I have a quote to finish off the day and that is by Arthur Ashe, and that is, “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” Sometimes the best quotes are just the most simple, aren't they?
All right guys, take care, thanks so much and I'll see you on the next episode of AskPat. I hope you enjoyed this, and if you did let me know. Shoot me a message on Twitter, that's the quickest and fastest and easiest way to do it, or Instagram @PatFlynn. Love you guys, take care, bye.