🚀 What do your clients desperately want but can't seem to get?
How to find the blue ocean when everyone else is fighting for scraps.
Howdy folks,
If you’re new here, we are on Part 3 of the Ideal Client Profile Series, where we’re learning how to get so razor-sharp on our ideal client that our messaging can’t do anything but magnetize our perfect-match clients to us like a moth to a flame.
Today we’ll be talking about performing a Competitive Landscape Scan, which means taking a look at the various aspects of businesses and brands like yours so that you can find the gap in the market, or the blue ocean.
👉🏽 If you are struggling with brand clarity in your business, feel free to start here:
If you’ve been following along on the exercises, you should have an idea of the kind of person you are meant to serve, who sits at the intersection of these 3 things:
👨🏻🌾 Who you are
🏆 Your skills and capabilities
🦄 The type of person you love helping
Now that we’ve scratched your itch, it’s time to learn more about them.
Why is this so important?
Because the only successful way to do business is to understand what the market desperately wants but they can’t get. Rather than trying to make your skills, experience, and story fit into the hearts and minds of total strangers, why not go to them first?
Or rather, why not go to the people who already know this? 😏
Your “competitors” have already done this research, and they’re giving you signals about your ideal client profile’s pain points that will shed a lot of light on understanding what they want. Let’s go sniff around at what they already know, shall we?
Enter the Competitive Landscape Scan (I purchased this amazing template from Tasha at Duraca Strategic, which I highly recommend getting).
The columns of the chart include:
Type of competitor (aspirational or peer organization)
Mission/Objectives (grab from their website)
Target Audiences (i.e., who they’re serving, such as people with no tech background looking to make passive income online, business owners and professionals looking to expand their business with a self-published book, etc.)
Resources and materials (i.e., what assets they bring to the table, like courses, books, coaching, Time-Square billboard access, etc.)
Revenue model (i.e., how much do they charge, for what, for how long, and how frequently, like $8K for 1:1 coaching for 4 months)
How does it work (i.e., how do you get the product or service for what you put in)
Key messages (grab from their website, and will tell you a lot about their brand)
Tone (e.g., fun? flirty? professional? playful? white-glove? BIG PROFITS? etc.)
Anything else you noticed? (e.g., their CEO is a 4x NYT-Bestselling author)
Reach, channels used to communicate and/or sell (e.g., social media, ads placements, podcasts, blogs, etc.)
Website (duh).
Find your closest 4-5 “competitors” and begin chunking down all the aspects of their brand and messaging. The beauty of doing this exercise is that, automatically, the gaps start to come out of the woodwork. You start to hypothesize. You start to wonder. Why don’t they offer this? Or that?
This took me a few days of sitting at my local university’s library, but I am sooo glad I did this. Now that I have an idea of what the market offers, I’m recognizing a lot of patterns in what they don’t offer.
In my particular niche, nonfiction book marketing for business owners, executives, entrepreneurs, and experts, I’m learning that there are a lot of people who specialize in book marketing. They all do a really good job. I’m also learning what they typically charge, which tells me that I’ve been charging too little. :)
But I’m also noticing that a lot of these businesses focus more on publishing the book, and less on the smokin’ hot leads that come from the book and all the sales to be made after the book.
They also don’t focus on the operational breakdown that comes when a business grows quickly (which happened to Jessica Zweig after her book sold 70,000 copies in a year, doubled the size of her business, and made her miserable because her business had so many breakdowns in the growth spurt.)
Hmmm…
When you start to notice these patterns, note these down as hypotheses, then bring these hypotheses to people who match your ICP to test your hypotheses.
You’ll also start to recognize the types of businesses that are most similar to yours (or the one you like the most) in your competitive landscape scan.
I want you to join their email list.
When I joined one of my “competitor’s” email lists, they included a book and other goodies in their email sequence, and that book is targeted at the ideal audience (which happens to be your ideal audience too!) by addressing the audience’s story, aspirations, fears, and frustrations.
Bingo!!
That’s exactly what you need. They serve it to you on a silver platter!
This is where you will start to paint a super vivid, emotional picture of your ideal client.
I highly encourage you to set aside 1 day and complete the Competitive Landscape Scan of your chosen market. This is like doing your math homework, folks. It’s less about the outcome, and way more about the process (even though my 2nd-grade math teacher would argue otherwise. I don’t think she really knew what math was about.)
In summary:
Complete the Competitive Landscape Scan exercise.
Create some hypotheses about your market, what they want, but can’t get.
Make an appointment with someone who matches your ICP to ask them questions and test out your hypotheses.
Join your “competitors’” email lists. Glean info about your avatar from their stuff.
Start to sketch out your avatar.
Want to know exactly what I’ll be asking my ideal client to fill out my avatar? You’ll have to stay tuned for next week… :)
👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽 I am thinking about creating a version of the Ideal Client Profile template for you guys so you can do these exercises with me. Let me know in the comments (or by emailing me or messaging me) if you would like that.
👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽 What else do you need help with? Was this intuitive? Too hard? What can I help clarify for you? Leave me a note in the comments.
Thank you for reading! ❤️ Hit the heart button on your way out to help spread this message.
Much love,
Renee
It's a great idea to learn from your competitors. If you plan to roll out an offer (e.g., for one-on-one coaching), do what your competitors do and add your own flavour.