Catherine Langman:
Well, hello there, it’s Catherine Langman here back with another episode of the Productpreneur Success Podcast. Welcome to the show if this is your first episode that you’ve heard, and welcome back if you’re a longtime listener. Today’s episode is going to be all about how to stand out from your competition in the marketplace, whether you are an e-commerce retailer, a brand selling online, or you are selling through retail stores. Regardless of the way that you are trying to sell your wares to your customers, you need to stand out from your competitors. If you don’t, then it’s going to be very difficult for your customers to actually notice you and therefore come and buy from you.
Catherine Langman:
Today’s episode is inspired by a question posed in our Rockstar Productpreneurs Facebook group. If you’re not already in that group, it’s a great place to hang out if you’re a product business owner. You can join by going to catherinelangman.com/rockstar. But anyway, the question goes like this, and thank you to Emerson for posting this question.
Catherine Langman:
“Looking for advice. I want to set up a business selling moms and babies products while on maternity leave. The products are essential items such as nappy bags, wipes, swaddles, baby nappy rash cream, and other mom self-care products. I know there is a lot of competition in this market, but just want to ask the community if it is fair pricing, good quality products, so multiple products tested by myself and my kids from each supplier to ensure the quality, will you guys buy it? What are you guys looking for when you are buying products for yourself and your baby, or buying a baby shower gift?”
Catherine Langman:
So couple questions kind of rolled up in there and really prompted some great discussion in our group. And I know that Emerson received some really great responses there, but there’s a couple really, really crucial things tied up in this post.
Catherine Langman:
The first thing is, it is absolutely fantastic that this poster was actually doing some research prior to deciding whether to go ahead with the business idea. Of course, we do need to all try our hardest to qualify our idea before we go ahead with our business. You really do want to make sure that there is some demand out there for what you want to sell. That’s great.
Catherine Langman:
But the second thing tied up in here is this premise or this idea that having fair pricing, so good prices, competitive prices, I’m assuming she’s getting at, as well as good quality products will be enough to get people to buy. And she’s describing a collection of products that are commonly sold together in a number of other places. It is a very competitive market. And so this is a scenario that I see a lot. I’ve been through it from experience. When I had my first brand in the modern cloth nappy market, I was the brand owner and manufacturer. And we’d sold a lot on our own website, but we also had stockists and we saw so many times that new retail businesses and new brands as well would start up because of a similar scenario. The mum was on maternity leave, was really loving the products and inspired to start a business to sell them. Because they loved them, they felt sure that other people would love them too.
Catherine Langman:
And there’s truth in that for sure, but that was as far as the thinking went and very few of them had any kind of way of differentiating from their competitors. They weren’t really standing out as different or better in any kind of way to be able to either expand the customer base or to attract some customers maybe off some other brands or other retail stores. And if you can’t stand out as different or better in any kind of way, then you’re really just not going to attract an audience. And with no audience, of course, you’re not going to make any sales.
Catherine Langman:
You go to the point with my brand that I’d be getting inquiries most days, but at least several inquiries a week from startup retailers wanting to stock our range, which is great. But so many of them really had no idea how they were actually going to be able to attract customers and to sell the products, either our products or anything else that they were selling. And so I started to ask questions in my stockist inquiry form, geared at finding out how they were going to promote our brand and to be able to sell through the products. At the end of the day, it did mean that we took on less stockists, but hopefully it also helped the businesses themselves to think about that and put a few plans in place that might help them.
Catherine Langman:
So we’re going to really dive into this today and I’m going to share a bit of a step-by-step. You guys know how much I love a step-by-step, to give you some tips on what to do. And whether you’re a business that’s thinking about starting, or you are an established business but haven’t done this, this is super important to do. This idea of being able to differentiate or stand out from your competitors, you need to be able to do this. So hopefully this episode is super helpful to help you through this process.
Catherine Langman:
The first thing that you really need to think about is how do you actually attract your customers? And so the first part of that equation is first you’ve got to know who they are, and you’ve got to be really specific about this. Now I put my hand up and confess that when I first started my first brand, which is like over 14 years ago now, I made a mistake here. Obviously I was selling nappies and other nappy related products that we were making, and I just assumed any parent who was having a baby or who had a baby would be our customer or a potential customer. And that just was a silly idea, really, because I don’t think certainly not back then, but probably not even now, would you ever get 100% of parents using a reusable nappy product. And so I learned the hard way that you have to be a lot more specific than that.
Catherine Langman:
You really need to know exactly who your customers are, and you’ve got to be very specific about it. And it’s not just about demographics like age, stage of life, income, education levels, all of those sorts of things, but geographics super important as well there as well. Your customers, city dwellers or regional dwellers or whatever, but you need to go further than that as well.
Catherine Langman:
My customers ultimately ended up having a very strong desire to save money. And so that was a very big influential factor in customers choosing to buy our products. There were two other reasons that really came in for our customers. Secondly was really strong beliefs around the environment and sustainable practices, sustainability, and not wanting to use disposable non-compostable products. And so that was a really big thing for our customers. And then the other thing was really, really important to our customers that they adopted really natural health and wellbeing related practices. So they were often parents who were going to breastfeed, not always, but this is kind of the majority description. They were likely to breastfeed. They were likely to be babywearing. So using baby carriers and slings and things like that. And a lot of them also were into co-sleeping. That wasn’t me. Myself, I’m a terrible sleeper at the best of times. Anyway.
Catherine Langman:
Once I really formed a better, clearer, and more specific idea of who my customer was, I actually then took it one step further because I wanted to think about personality as well. And so for me, I was really… For me, I’m the person who likes to have a bit of a laugh. My method of coping with anything stressful or difficult is to try and find the humor in it. And so that was going to be my audience as well and I’ll tell you a bit later on in this episode, how I was able to reflect that in my brand to my audience so that there was a connection happening there.
Catherine Langman:
The second thing is what is actually important to your customers? What is it that they really want to experience? Are there some really strong values or beliefs or anything along those lines that is also important to them? So this, I guess, still tying in with what I was saying before, but really thinking about what’s important to them. And so an example here, not so much from my first brand, but I’m going to mention Babiators kids’ sunglasses. You guys have probably heard Kristy on our show here before, but it’s important to them that they have really healthy outdoor active lifestyles. So you got to think about really what’s important to your customers from values and beliefs, lifestyle, all of that kind of stuff.
Catherine Langman:
And you might be thinking, “What on earth does this have to do with me trying to establish a business and sell more products online?” We’re going to get there, trust me, but it is important. I mean, at the end of the day, you could probably have a think about the kinds of businesses and brands that you actually buy from and that you engage with and respond to. You might respond to their marketing online, or you might respond to a recommendation from a friend, or whatever the case may be. You’ll start to notice a little bit of a pattern about what actually attracts you to a business or a brand before you’re even going to buy from them. Hopefully that kind of gets your thought processes wearing a little bit, but the next thing I want to talk about…
Catherine Langman:
In the original post, one of the questions that the poster asked was if it is fair pricing and good quality products, will you guys buy it? There is this false belief a lot of the time that having the best quality products and the best prices is going to mean that people will buy it. And just because you’ve got the best quality products, actually does not mean that you’re going to have the best-selling products. And again, I’ll put my hand up and say, I fell into this mistake very early on in my business career and it probably, for me, comes back to my upbringing, really. All through my childhood and school years and all of that, there was this message drummed into me that if you work hard and you get good grades, then you’ll be rewarded with good results or good career or promotions or whatever the case may be. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t work like that.
Catherine Langman:
I don’t know if you guys know of the author Robert Kiyosaki, who is the author of Rich Dad Poor Dad. If you’ve never read that book, I highly recommend it, especially if you do have a business or want to have a business. Anyhow, he tells a story in there about a… Obviously, Robert Kiyosaki, Rich Dad Poor Dad is a Uber high-selling book. He’s written multiple books throughout his career. They’re all top sellers. He’s done extremely well for himself in that regard, but he tells a story about how a aspiring author contacted him to ask him for advice about how to become a best-selling author. The author in question or the aspiring author in question had gone to university and studied creative writing and wanted to become a published author. And she was highly educated and had all of these academic qualifications and this, that, and the other.
Catherine Langman:
And Robert Kiyosaki’s advice was, “You need to learn how to sell.” And unfortunately for this aspiring author, she was highly offended at that because she thought selling was dirty and that it was not something that she wanted to be. She didn’t want to be associated with being a salesperson. And again, I can totally understand that kind of a mindset. It’s something that many of us probably grew up with as well. However, at the end, Robert Kiyosaki, he just pointed to the cover of his book and says, “It doesn’t say the best-quality author. It’s like the best-selling author. So you actually do need to learn how to sell.”
Catherine Langman:
And at the end of the day, if the best-quality product was also the best-selling product, then McDonald’s would not be the highest selling burger in the world. At the end of the day, I don’t think anybody would say it’s the best tasting burger in the world, but you can’t argue with the fact that they are the most successful burger business around the world.
Catherine Langman:
Bottom line here is that it doesn’t matter how good quality your products are. You need to learn how to sell them. And if you’re going to learn how to sell them, that means you need to be able to attract an audience, and to do that, you need to be able to stand out from the crowd. You need to stand out from your competitors. So all of this comes down to differentiation and there’s a number of ways that people think they should be differentiating. I think a lot of particularly small business startups, they’ll fall in love with products. It’s not uncommon for mums when they go on maternity leave, they’ve got a beautiful new baby, they’re discovering all of these things that work and don’t work in their parenting journey, and it is a time where a lot of us women are inspired to start a business. That was certainly the same for me. So totally get that.
Catherine Langman:
But at the end of the day, it’s really easy to assume that if you have the best quality products at the cheapest prices, that people are going to buy them. And unfortunately, price is not a great differentiator. For starters, you just end up making no money. If you differentiate on price, you’re cutting into your profit and it leaves you with nothing left to spend on your marketing so that you can actually attract that audience to you. And then there’s nothing left to pay yourself at the end of the day.
Catherine Langman:
And so differentiating on price is going to be the fastest way to the bottom. So you really don’t want to do that, but there’s a second reason why you don’t want to do it. And this is something that people… they just don’t want to accept a lot of the time. And the fact is that customers or humans, consumers, people, we psychologically just don’t… We don’t believe that a cheap product can also be a high quality product. I know that sounds weird. I know that when you’ve tried a product and you know that it’s really good and it works really well for you, that then it’s like, “Great, can I get it at a discount? Can I save some money on it?” That’s awesome, but you’re never going to attract any new customers to you and get them to believe that cheap products are going to be high quality products as well. It just is not how our brain computes. I think if you put yourself in that boat…
Catherine Langman:
If you were thinking maybe going to have a look at a new television or a new mattress or a new car, or whatever the case may be, even food. If you look at the prices and then think about how you might react to that pricing, we just do it all the time. We just assume that the cheapest price is going to be the cheapest quality. I think we’ve all been well-trained I think by the likes of Alibaba type products and/or AliExpress, whatever they go by, to train us into assuming that cheap price equals crap quality. So you do need to think about that with your marketing.
Catherine Langman:
How else would you then differentiate? How can you stand out from the crowd if you are not relying on just having the best quality products at the cheapest price? How else can you stand out?
Catherine Langman:
I’m going to tell you about a couple of examples. I’m going to tell you about a supermarket example, and I’m going to also describe an example of one of the stockists that used to stock my brand. I think they’re still in existence, but I’ll describe that scenario. And then I’m going to describe a brand example as well. So couple of different retail examples, a supermarket, and an online boutique example, and then a brand example.
Catherine Langman:
First of all, when you think about supermarkets, so here in Australia, there’s the kind of the duopoly that owns most of the market, Coles and Woolworths, and they definitely differentiate on price. There’s not a whole lot that’s different for them. And so how do they then get customers in, how do they make money? At the end of the day, they are enormous companies and they have their properties, their physical supermarket premises are in prime locations. And so it comes down to location, location, location as that real estate quote goes. And so because they have these captive audiences, they’re in local areas that have the right kind of population living there that are likely to need and want to go to a supermarket.
Catherine Langman:
You’ll often even see Woolworths and Coles in the same shopping center. At the end of the day, sure, some people might decide they’re Coles customers and some might decide they’re Woolworths customers, but there’s not a whole lot that really differentiates those two. And they do compete a lot on price. They’ll have their $2 or their dollar per litre milk and their dollar per loaf of bread and whatever else. So they’ve got their staples that they really compete heavily on price to get people in the door. And then it’s all about having location, and of course, they’ve got enormous ranges of products that you can pretty much get everything that you need in one place. That’s how they do it.
Catherine Langman:
But if you are not Coles or Woolworths and you do not have the deep pockets of such an enormous company behind you, which most of us don’t, then you need to find other ways of doing it. And so here in Adelaide, where I live, I want to tell you about this awesome supermarket that’s the one that I go to. It’s actually not the closest one since we moved house last year, but I still go there. It’s not too far away for me to be motivated to go somewhere else. It’s a Foodland. I think in other states we have IGAs, but basically it’s an independent supermarket and they actually do things quite differently.
Catherine Langman:
And so they’ve worked out that their kind of ideal customer is not going to be motivated by having a super cheap dollar loaf of bread. And really what they want is really good quality, fresh ingredients. So they have butcher quality meats and they’ve basically got a fish monger in there. Their fruit and vegetable is super fresh, really high quality. They have an enormous organics’ selection. They have great fresh breads baked on the premises. They have a beautiful cafe there as well. It’s restaurant quality produce that they serve up in this cafe. All of the [inaudible 00:21:06] products are on the shelves there. They have all your regular stuff as well, of course, but it’s the kind of person that really wants to have really great quality, fresh food, but also is quite motivated to not use lots of packaging. So everything… not everything, but a lot of stuff there is packaging free or it’s using compostable packaging or recyclable or whatnot. And so that’s kind of their customer avatar, if you will.
Catherine Langman:
And then they do other things in the supermarket to make it a really nice place to come and shop. They pretty much always have live music playing in there, which is fun, and they don’t have any self-service checkout. So it’s the place where you really want to get the best quality produce and you also want to be served. You don’t want to have to do it yourself to get out of the checkout. And so when you think about… A supermarket is the sort of thing where you’d think you can’t do anything different, but there they are doing something really, really different and they are a thriving business and they’re doing exceptionally well. There’s one example there.
Catherine Langman:
Another example that I want to talk about, just because I know that a lot of people do want to start up businesses as retail boutique so that a retail boutique online is one that is going to be selling other people’s brands. And so if that is you, then this example might stand out for you. Of course, in my first business, we designed and manufactured a range of reusable nappies and other related products. We used to use sales tactics like selling them in different sized value packs or bundles. So a trial pack, a half-time pack, and a full-time pack just as a basic example. And we used that strategy to help customers work out how many they needed to use, how many did they really need to buy in order to be able to use the products successfully?
Catherine Langman:
And so a lot of our retailers that came on board, they’d just follow the same blueprint and at the end of the day… And yes, they were stocking some other brands as well, but at the end of the day, it didn’t really give customers a different experience than what they could get from the brand. Whereas this stockist, Darlings Downunder was their name. It was the business name and they had a really great, great strategy for differentiating. They did it in two ways. Number one, they stocked a lot of different brands. Probably they had one of the highest or biggest ranges for an online retail boutique. And so if you were a consumer and you wanted to try a variety of different brands and styles and types of nappies, then that was the place that you would go to. You wouldn’t go to a retail store that had maybe three brands. You’d go to this one because they pretty much had everything. And so the breadth of and depth of range was one way that they differentiated.
Catherine Langman:
And the second way that they did things differently, which was completely copyable really, but people just didn’t do it. They had value packs that had different brands in them. So you could try different things together in one pack. And so that was a really simple way to stand out and it was useful and valuable to the customer.
Catherine Langman:
So there’s a bunch of different ways that you can stand out as a retailer. Definitely you want to consider having a really deep or broad range. I think all of the e-commerce retailers that you see doing really well selling other people’s brands do have a great range of products. Customers are not going to want to come to a website and buy one thing here and then have to go to another website and buy one thing there and go to another one and buy one thing over there. You really need to think about the experience that your customer wants. If you’re selling a multitude of brands, then you’re going to be able to give people the speed and ease of shopping because it’s all in one place if that makes sense. A good example in the baby and kids market would be CherryBaby.com.au. In the maybe skincare, makeup, beauty market, Adore Beauty, there’s Huge these days, or Nourished Life would be another one. It’s a really great range.
Catherine Langman:
But then also think about your own branding and your own personal values. Thinking back to who your ideal customer is, specifically their values and their beliefs and their lifestyle and what’s really important to them. What do they want to experience? You want to try and cultivate that kind of brand yourself. Like I said earlier with my own brand, my way of coping with life generally, but certainly with any kind of difficult or stressful or hard experiences is to have a laugh and a sense of humor. And I really brought that into the branding. All of the imagery, a lot of the promotions and a lot of the way that I would create that marketing content, it was all designed around trying to normalize a tough time of life. There’s great stuff with being a parent, you’re sleep deprived, all of that kind of stuff. My way of coping with all of that was to have a bit of a laugh. And so I tried to cultivate a brand that went after that.
Catherine Langman:
Let’s dive into the branding example… Sorry, the brand owner or distributor example. A brand like Babiators, they have a website, they also sell wholesale unto other stockists, but they have a website where they sell directly to customers. It’s a different kind of business model compared to being a retailer selling other people’s brands. That’s why I wanted to include another example here of how to differentiate. For Babiators, like I said earlier, it’s important to them to encourage and cultivate healthy outdoor lifestyles for families and for children and really that’s one of the things that they’re really big on.
Catherine Langman:
And so when you become, I guess, part of their community, part of their audience, you get a sense of that. There’s a lot of content that they talk about that really is encouraging parents and kids to get outside and just have fun, active outdoor lifestyles. And of course, you want to be wearing sunglasses while you’re doing that, but that’s not necessarily the sole purpose of them creating that kind of a brand and that kind of content for the audience. But they are going to be attracting people to them that also want to have that kind of a lifestyle. So this is how they differentiate.
Catherine Langman:
They also differentiate based on having a high quality product. So you are never going to go to Babiators and find the cheapest product on the marketplace. I think Kristy would probably say that when she was first getting started with that business, that she found it really hard to price that product where it is priced now. She’s the person who wouldn’t really go and spend money on the most expensive products herself. She’s not interested in designer anything really. She’s super down to earth kind of person and for her, she felt it was quite a challenge to price her products at that higher end of the scale. But at the end of the day, like I was saying before, customers are not going to believe you, that your product is the highest quality product, if it’s the cheapest price. It just is a disconnect. It doesn’t work.
Catherine Langman:
So of course, in branding and differentiating as the highest quality product, that means that she needs to price appropriately there as well so that customers actually do feel like they’ve made that decision to buy. They feel good about making the decision to buy the best quality product for their kid. So it’s all kind of tied in together there.
Catherine Langman:
Now, in order to help you, I’m just going to get some notes up in front of me, I have a little bit of a step-by-step process for you to help figure out what is your unique selling proposition. How are you to stand out from the crowd? How are you going to differentiate and tell your customers what is special about you or present your brand in a way that your customers innately and automatically understand this? That’s the kind of reaction that you really want to have, and that is the power of being able to differentiate and to then be able to communicate those points of difference in all of your branding and all of your marketing.
Catherine Langman:
At the end of the day, I guess we have to remember that all of our customers, ourselves as well, we’re bombarded with marketing messages every single day and we cannot reevaluate every service and every product, every time we need to make a purchase. It’s just too time consuming. So to make life easier, we as consumers, as people, we do tend to organize products and services into groups and position them accordingly. For instance, we might think about the safest car or the most expensive car or the best value car. This is how differentiating can kind of really help you stand out from the competitors in the minds of your customers. Let’s go through some step-by-steps here.
Catherine Langman:
And so the first thing that you want to do is list five attributes that your ideal customer is looking for in regards to the kind of products that you’re selling. For instance, if I describe Kristy’s Babiators sunglasses, the customers might be looking for really cute… From a fashion perspective, they might be looking for a really high level of UV protection. They might be looking for something that’s not going to break easily in their kids’ little clumsy hands. They might be looking for a range of colors and designs, and they might want to find something that’s just really easy to get. So, accessibility. I mean, that’s just a few examples there, but you really want to think about your customers, your specific customers, and list out the attributes that they are really looking for in regards to the products that you sell.
Catherine Langman:
Then you want to move on to the next step, which is to identify three of your top competitors. That should be easy. When you’re thinking about competitors, don’t necessarily think laterally in terms of direct competitors selling exactly what you sell. You need to think in terms of the sorts of competitors that would also solve the same need or desire or problem that your customers have. I’m just saying that because I know a few of you are probably going to come back to me and say, “Well, hang on a Catherine, my product is totally unique. There is no competitor that sells what I sell.” Don’t think in terms of that. Think in terms of the problem that you’re solving or the need that you’re fulfilling, there’s always a competitor for that even if the product is not exactly the same. So you want to think about those top three competitors.
Catherine Langman:
And then in regards to those competitors, what are they most known for? What is their unique selling proposition? What is their core or key point of differentiation? You might need to think hard about this, but you really, really, really want to give that some thought.
Catherine Langman:
And then for the fun part, you want to list five ways that makes your brand, whether it’s a brand of products that you make or a retail brand. A retail brand is one that… a retailer, that’s a boutique that sells lots of other people’s brands. So five things that makes your brand stand out from those competitors. Hopefully you can do that quite easily. Don’t overthink it, but you do need to do this work. And then you want to think a little bit broader than that as well. Are there any needs in your industry that are not being met yet? This is about looking at industry trends or looking at gaps in the market. And can you extend any kind of a competitive advantage into those areas? Again, this is going to give you just a little bit of an edge so that you can start to really stand out from your competitors in the marketplace.
Catherine Langman:
And then I would recommend, can you rank any standout factors on a scale of one to 10, 10 being the best based on what your customer is going to be most drawn to? And then once you’ve done that, perhaps try and write that unique selling proposition as a statement. This is about explaining what makes your brand different and better than your competition and why your customers respond to your brand and product. So try and articulate it in maybe one to two sentences, a brief statement that is really articulating that unique selling proposition and how you are standing out from the crowd.
Catherine Langman:
Hopefully that’s helpful. Hopefully that makes really good sense. And hopefully I’ve been able to give you some really solid reasons why it is so crucially important to think about differentiation and how important it is to your success as a business. Regardless of what kind of a business it is, but especially in e-commerce, you are really going to struggle to attract any kind of an audience over onto your website or just into your sphere of influence if you do not have a means of standing out from the crowd, You’ve got to give customers a reason to come and visit, and a really good reason to buy from you as opposed to somebody else. So no copycat retailers, and definitely know thinking that you’re going to have the best quality products at the cheapest price and therefore customers will buy does not work like that.
Catherine Langman:
That’s what I have for you this week. I hope you’ve enjoyed the episode and I look forward to being with you again on the show next week. Bye for now.