We’ve spent the past 4 days thinking about what you love to do. Now it is time to look at things from another perspective: what do you have to offer, who would want it, and how much would they be willing to pay?
The best way to figure all that out is to find a group of people who share your interests, and ask a lot of questions. The great thing about starting with passions is this: if you absolutely love doing something, chances are there are other people out there who share your enthusiasm.
How do you find the right people? You could start from what you already know. Are there places you visit to engage in your passion? Do you belong to a club or team? Do you know of places where fellow enthusiasts hang out?
But by far the easiest place to find communities of like-minded people is on the internet. Just do a Google search for your key word, and see what pops up. Are there forums or blogs that revolve around your passion? Other businesses offering products or services? Keep notes on what key words you searched and what you found. We will be using them tomorrow to narrow down your niche, or target market.
For now, though, you are just here to eavesdrop. What are people talking about? What problems do they need to solve? What unfilled needs do they have?
Let’s take an example. Say you love fly fishing. Check out the top forums and websites dedicated to fly fishing. Are people looking for better, more effective tactics and strategies for catching fish? Do they want new and inventive flies? Or maybe they are looking for information on how to tie their own flies, or where are the best places to go fly fishing? The goal here is to identify a strong need in the marketplace, and envision a product or service you can offer to fill that need.
John Assaraf and Murray Smith call this The Law of Compensation. It is a simple formula: Compensation occurs when enough people want what you have to offer. To create a successful business, you need to have a clear, focused, vivid idea that translates into a commercial offering that matches up with something enough people want badly enough to pay for it.
Jay Abraham, refer to it as your Unique Selling Proposition (USP). Your USP is what differentiates you from the competition. Most folks think there are 3 main ways to distinguish yourself: offer something of higher quality, offer something that is easier to use, or offer something that is lower cost than your competitors.
Executive Coach Tony Jeary uses this formula: Vision is created by combining opportunity with your personal strengths and talents. You will be pulled forward toward success if you create a clear vision that capitalizes on what you love to do, choosing opportunities that are in line with your personal strengths and talents.
No matter what you call it, the bottom line is clear. To create a successful business, you must do three things:
- Identify a product or service that people want or need, and are willing to pay for.
- Create a unique and valuable product or service to fill their need. Be really clear on what differentiates you from the competition…your unique selling proposition.
- Be effective in marketing and selling that product or service to the target audience you have identified.
Here are some short exercise to help you get a better handle on what you have to offer in the marketplace. Jot down your responses, because we will use them tomorrow to further refine your niche market.
- Shift your mindset from provider to consumer. Think about the things that you have needed in the past to pursue your passion…the problems that you needed help solving…the information you wished you could get your hands on.
- Listen in on the conversations of others who share your passions. Visit online forums, blogs, and other social networking sites like Facebook to see what people are talking about. Leave comments and ask questions that will help you identify the unmet needs and desires of your target market.
- Visit a bookstore and browse books and magazines related to your passion. It is a good sign if there are lots of books and magazines. That means that people are hungry for information and willing to pay for it. Check out the book titles and blurbs. Read the headlines and article titles in the magazines. Jot down any ideas you get for how you can fill an unmet need, provide a desired service or product, or add valuable information to the conversation.
Tomorrow we will take the notes you have gathered and really refine you target market and niche. In the meantime, if you are looking for more information on creating a unique selling proposition, check out the recommended readings and resources below.
Recommended Readings and Resources
The following is a bonus article from internet marketing king Marlon Sanders. It is a no-nonsense guide to creating your Unique Selling Proposition (USP). If you like Marvin’s style, be sure to click on the link at the bottom to get your free copy of The Best of Marlon Sanders, a collection of his very best ezine articles. Enjoy!
Steal These 3 USP’s Today!
Memo From: Marlon Sanders
Memo To: Laurie
Re: The hidden connection between my name, the Blue Marlin fishand selling up a boatload
Hello,
Marlon here.
You don’t like competition?
I don’t either.
What if you could have your own BLUE ocean to sell to?
What I’m going to explain to you is one of my secrets. It’s simple but very profound.
As you know, obviously, my name is Marlon. But you may not have connected my name to the The Blue Marlin fish.
In days gone by people called me Blue, after the fish.
Now, to me the fish is a symbol of blue ocean. That is, ocean unfettered by the morass of boats, people, and others competing for your space.
To use another analogy, some call it “low hanging fruit.”
In other words, money you make without competing hard.
Back in the 1980’s Jay Abraham revived a slogan from the 50’s called “unique selling roposition.” The modern term for it is “differentiation.”
What makes you and your product or service DIFFERENT?
Unique = different
Selling = it sells
Proposition = it’s a proposition to the customer
Jay is such a great sales person he can take a term from the 1950’s, and get people to pay $5,000 to learn about it! Now that’s a guy I admire.
I prefer the modern term differentiation. What differentiates your products and services.
There are only 3 basic USP’s, according to renowned competition expert Michael Porter. And I must say I agree completely.
1. Increased performance
Can you help people get more bang for their buck, their time, their energy, their effort?
2. Greater convenience
There’s always a market for convenience. This is why I have ProductDashboard.com, Promodashboard.com, DesignDashboard.com, AffiliateDashboard.com.
All of those products are designed to make learning various aspects of online marketing as fast, simple and easy as humanly possible.
People spend thousands for programs and coaching that teach and give less. True story. I’ve had people tell me they’ve spent as much as $7500 for coaching but gained more from one of my
under $100 Dashboards.
3. Low cost
One good strategy in this recession is to have some lower priced versions of your offerings.
My Dashboards are under $100, so they fit this USP. Ditto for Ockham’s Razor, Amazing Formula and some of my other products.
The PROBLEM with low cost as a USP is someone else can always be cheaper. But there’s always a market for cheap. Normally, if you follow the cheap USP, it’s because you’re selling into
Blue Ocean.
In other words, you’re going after customers who don’t currently buy your category of product or service.
Most of my new products are Blue Ocean concepts. They’re the first in the category.
For example, Pushbuttonletters.com was MY original creation. The reason you don’t see more Push Button products is I own most of the domains.
I’m the one who invented the whole category or genre of sales letter creation or generator software. That was my idea. Not usually attributed but you can check whois dates on sites and
see it for yourself.
The Push Button Letters software is about CONVENIENCE but also performance. I found that if I forced people to follow a formula, they’d get better results. It’s also more convenient than trying
to write a letter from scratch.
Another Blue Ocean move was the Dashboard line. I invented the whole Dashboard product concept and own most all the key domains.
I also call these “flanking” moves but that’s a whole different discussion and explanation.
The whole gift in advance of asking for a testimonial strategy was my invention first presented in my AutomationSecrets.com product.
I was the first to codify the 2-page web site concept and sell it years ago in a highly popular and influence product at Gimmesecrets.com.
That product is evergreen and works as good today as it did the day I wrote it. The full title was “Gimme My Money Now.” And the USP was performance. It performed better and more simply
than other paradigms. Still does.
I’m NOT bragging here. The point is to demonstrate to you what I’ve been doing since 1998 and before that WORKS over and over again.
It’s a Formula you repeat.
The two action steps today are:
1. Sell into Blue Ocean
Instead of competing, get into market space where no one else is.
As an example, I gave you Pushbuttonletters.com, my Dashboards, and Gimmesecrets.com.
2. Use of the 3 USP’s.
Your product has to either:
a. Be more convenient
b. Increase performance
c. Lower costs
I do NOT recommend you focus on C. That leaves you with either convenience or performance as your main USP. In other words, if you got a flower shop online, you’re either a LOT more convenient to buy from than the local shop. Or you got bigger, better, badder flowers.
You could be the cheapest but it’s not usually recommended. And you can’t be all 3. The best performance doesn’t jive with the lowest costs AND the most convenience.
I could sit here and throw out a million USP’s at you that dazzle you. But I try to simplify things.
Any idiot can make things complex.
It’s my experience that you have to really get to the heart of a subject to make it simple. A lot of “gurus” are only in this market because they see easy bux.
What I do is immerse myself in topics NOT to make them more complex but to find the essence and simplify them.
That would be a USP of convenience with a side benefit of performance.
But there’s a cost attached to that. If I buy 200 books to study a topic and spend a year reading them, it would be cheating myself to sell the distilled results of that research for the lowest cost.
I can take any topic and make it complex in a flash. But it takes a LOT of thought, reading and cogitation to take something that could be complex, extract the essence and make it simple.
Know your USP.
You have 3 choices.
Best wishes,
Marlon Sanders
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