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Competitive Research & Testing

Let's talk about competitive research and I am spending some time on this in the workbook again on page eleven so important to know about the market size is who are your competitors and what are they doing? What are they good at what what are they terrible at what do you think that is? What do we need to know what our competitors are doing? Yes and we can improve on their weaknesses and we can learn from their strength so when somebody says I don't have any competitors what do you think they might be in the wrong industry one percent but I like that okay, ok that's true um so the opportunity for your business comes from knowing what else is out there in the market and then you do that just better or as we said if it doesn't exist like the guy uh the example I told you earlier about the guy who does the disposable shavers that he sends out once a month or the guys that are doing you know, the pet products in the box that are being shipped out I don't know the numbers I don't know how su...

ccessful I know the shaver guys very, very, very successful but um there's nothing wrong with kind of doing that but you got it you have to test that right? So old ideas just made better so what do your competitors too and then let's talk about your competitors so do you know anything about joe competitors and again for the life audience all over the world on the on the stream tell us about your competitors I want to know what do you know about your competitors how many do you have where they better where are they? They're terrible there a suck added and why does this make you and your business perfectly positioned okay, so let's talk about your competitors well I don't at the moment I'm not sewing anything but I'm thinking that um I would really like to do the hollywood portrait shots and I don't think that there's too many people out in my area that's doing that if any so I think that that's um a competitive edge and um why well because I think that a lot of people do like that kind of style okay, let me ask you a couple questions because I happen to know something about this okay hasn't been done before it has when um well it has been done in hollywood I don't know hollywood glamour for talking yeah that has been done and there are famous people who have done that okay and and is it being done right now it isthe it iss but not my area okay who does it? You know I don't know someone who does it really well and she's a frequent instructor here on creative live is su bryce so she does a lot of this this women's portraiture and bringing them into an experience bringing their family members together I don't know if anyone is familiar with her work but she would be a good person to look to as a potential example yeah, I'm familiar with it okay, yeah sorry to interrupt go ahead I don't know you're a ce faras you know the area that I live in or san francisco I don't I don't really know what have to research that. Okay, but I haven't seen anything in the papers or anything that anybody has been doing that in the area so I can't really say okay for sure, right, so but you need to do your research. Yeah, absolutely. So if it's not done in your area then it's time to investigate why how well you you know you go on you go on google you um looking other photographers you hang out, you find your forums on linked in that are specific to you know these you know, I would look for photographers in the whatever bay area in northern california, you know, if there's something like that and then I would ask questions and I'd go on I have no problem calling competitors I'm like, listen, you know, I really like what you do they don't know if your competitor not you could be an interesting woman right? And you can see how quickly you can get an appointment and how long it takes you to get an appointment if they say, well, how he really booked out for the next month, then you know that they're probably really busy if they say you could come in this afternoon, then they're probably not very busy, so you get the data from anywhere. I used to make a joke that every time I went into anybody's office, especially doctors offices, no magazine was ever intact by the time I left because I would be sitting there and I'd be reading, you know, there was a piece of information I'm back and I rip out the page everybody looks at me like, no, I'm researching things right now so you thinks come to you like it sort of energetically really interesting is like once you start getting serious about it, things really start to happen and come back to you and this information starts popping up absolutely everywhere because now you're opening and now you're really looking so definitely do the research online what other photographers there doing research the photography associations that have or any kind of association in your particular niche in your particular area or your particular genre and participate joined them a lot of people, especially creative entrepreneurs, find it very interesting always so worried about hanging out with other creative entrepreneurs because but when back when I was a photographer rep, the question was always well, I work for let's say nordstrom and I do their cattle ox, I'm not going to hang out with this other photog because then he's going to also want to work with nordstrom's and want to take my client away from me. Do you really think that another person can take somebody away from you unless you suck it what you do and you have zero reclined relationship? So it doesn't matter what they say. Of course they should want all these great klein's it we all want those great klein's again here to be better. You have to be more specific and you have your value proposition off. What you offering has to be so much clearer defined. All right? What? What else do we know? Galina you're nodding, what do you know about your competitors? Um, if to look just russian based, I'm not very familiar. If there any close competitors, I know there are a lot off ah websites and forums targeted to women, but I personally don't know any targeted to creative side too, for russian speaking women, so their forums that are more broad, not a specific as I want to be okay, and why do you think that is, uh, because they want more traffic included more people a spa ce herbal okay that's a question to investigate right does it mean that perhaps or maybe there is no demand it's possible so you know if we talking about a language barrier in gleaners case so is their reason why they're not going is it because the language barrier to go to these forums or these websites is that they still feel like outsiders and that's really the opportunity for her to go in and create something that other people you know in her culture can relate too much better and that's what it takes so that's you know that is the million dollar question for you and we will not know unless we put it out there so you've got to really received young and infiltrate sort of the whole a community and and talk to people so you go to networking events you joined the chamber of commerce the trade association is specific to your to your group and you asked them questions like what would you think about this what would this have to be to be valuable for you how could I create this so you find you know the comfort what? Yeah what you what you want to get out of this so um or do you and research before really creating the london page or before creating the product itself, right? Yes, yes, because the pie if you create the new pie then you may be the only one eating it, but if you if you have a pie where others already you know one slices you can cut yourself a slice off so it's harder you know it's harder to create a new pie and to get that business going so what they say you know, if you can't be the leader in your munish create your own that takes that takes time, you know, like and I see this and women's code side the idea off giving women permission to have a functioning work life balance and be successful while everybody knows that there's a lot of education involved and you know and from the education toothy to the permission giving two women actually feeling it and then you know, wanting to pay money for it because they feel they actually deserve it that's a lot of steps to take so you have to have the luxury and the money you know, we talked about this in the funding to actually, you know, survive until the money kicks in so it's much easier to make money faster when you know what they want and give it to them thank you. I knew you were good bright student look, my talent, very good global students two obviously have a lot of work to do as well, christina says in venezuela I don't have a lot of competitors because there are not pet photographers but she believes that that's a good thing because she's seen as the pioneer in a place where it had never been done before but would you also encourage her teo continue to research continue to ask questions maybe it does exist he just hasn't ask the right people yet yes so you know the answer to their question again is it depends so if somebody in venezuela doesn't do pet photography has not been offered yet is thie cultural or community understanding that it may be considered frivolous to spend money on your pets like there are parts of the world where pets are not as cherished as they are in other parts off the world so here in america we go crazy over the pets I mean you know that psych hold businesses that creating nothing other than fancy things very expensive fancy baby strollers for pets I mean who would have thought so make sure that when you built this business that the cultural requirements or you know sort of what's commonly assumed that people are willing to spend money on their pets and then target that particular market and who are the people that will be spending money on that so yes it could be that there's no competition because up until now it's not happened yet that it even became socially acceptable to be you know to spend money on photos off your pet and post them where usually the family portrait sorr I mean, that is definitely a shift and thinking and I think about this all the time sort of interesting how you know culture shift when when I got married and that's a long time ago and my daughter is a mix so I married an african american and I was like one out of three couples in the whole school I mean, I didn't I didn't know in my whole my whole community not more than five couples that were interracial now they're everywhere right? But back then the locks and you know, it just wasn't give was kind of almost acceptable, but it wasn't really acceptable and people were still talking and looking today nobody cares I mean, they're everywhere now I mean it z you know, you know everything mixes and mingles so as the cultural acceptance changes there's definitely no businesses, so I think you may be onto something just make sure you're testing let's talk about how to test it somewhat so one way to test it is on social networks and on social networks you go and you say, hey, I have this idea I need your help when I was promoting the creative life courses course I send one email out and this email said remember what the email said what did say people live in studio such as yourself? Yes, right exactly and that email was extra ordinarily successful. Why? Because people love helping other people. Do not ask your mother. Do not ask your closest family because they tried to prevent you from being a failure and because they want to avoid you having to go through the pain of building a business many times close friends and family members may suggest you to not do it because they're afraid what happens and how upset you. Maybe if you fail, disregard those talk to everybody else, talk to people that are like minded talk to people that are have entrepreneurial mindsets talked to people that have accomplished something, always orient yourself upward, never downward and never sideways, you know, sideways is your peers you pierce don't want you to succeed, you know, but people that understand, you know, entrepreneurship that love and appreciate idea as they do so, you know, go and ask people for feedback whose feet back you really value my mother to this day is afraid that I'm not going to make it, sir, I mean, it's, not a joke. I mean, mind blowing to me. I mean, after all this time, she's like, yeah, you gotta be really careful about what it just was, something could happen, I'm like like, oh, everything already had happened, so so, uh, it's all right, another one is surveys. There is a great tool called surveymonkey and it's free, and you can do quick survey so surveys that easy please don't overdo it on the survey because I wrote about this the other day too do not send me a survey, everything every single time I talk to you it's not that important, but you know you can only send service ever so often don't make it more than five questions, and if it's radio buttons and one one written answer that's that's the most it's like ok between this and this between this and this and between this and this and how much would you spend for it? I think that's that's sufficient for a first survey and send it to the people that you trust and asked them to send it to other people or posted on your facebook ask other people to repose it or tweet about it. Um another one is meet ups find people that have meet ups that are in the same group or have a similar mindset. So there's got to be meet ups it's, especially if it helps to live in the big city to because you are close by so many and they're different categories and you can find I think on everything, the mid upon any single subject, yes very good. So meet ups are great and there's hundreds and hundreds of mediums and I believe that, um meet ups actually are all over the world now so you know, a little bit of research gets you along well. Here's another tour linked in comments linkedin is one of my most powerful tools on how I built my platforms the way I did it is I found the groups where my clients are so I go into the audience is that I think would like my service. So for the photography I went into all the other photographer groups because photographers on my client's if you are a photographer police promise me at this very moment to not join other photography groups and try to market to other photographers really absolute waste of time I could talk about this. I could go on about this forever. Photographers do not need to market other photographers you're allowed to on lee join to lengthen groups and one of which is mine and then you can, you know, do like whatever cannon on aiken group if you want but that's it promise the other groups I want you to join our if you do real estate photography joined the realtors if you do children's photography go where the moms are right but a professional group so you're gonna have to look through this and it could be uh, but there's, so many of these groups out there right now. You're going to find five for six. You know, mom, entrepreneurs, tara, you know, so, so just fine. And join about between five and ten of these groups. Then you inject yourself, you know, you watch for a little bit, you see what the topics are, and then you make comments in the comments. Go based upon your specialty, you say, well, it is very difficult for women over fifty two with the demands off their busy lives to pay attention to the nutrition and to their ah, physical well being, you know what? Do you guys what are your personal tricks too? You know, how do you stay healthy? And then people will answer. And then you answer every question in my practice or when I coach my clients or in my nutritional product. It is what I usually recommend so it's a very subtle seeding, very gentle or, you know, one of the things that busy mom preneurs always forget is to take a moment and really cherish the families because they're running from the morning until the evening. For that reasons I've developed this great service, that makes it really easy for you. You know for moms to just drop off their kids I even give you the list you all you do is go to the website you print out the list of the checklist you just drop him off and we have an afternoon of fun planned it's all resolved so you know you keep slowly and you could like they email address off course that's least very nice very nice exactly see how the process goes so you go there and then ideally you sent him to your website and then they give you the information and then you have permission to market to them so that's how I built my platform then there is facebook of course I find that facebook has become very heavily marketed lately and yeah, you're shaking your head already it's it's I do it more now for giving people a glimpse into my glamorous life because you know, I'm saying this in parenthesis, of course, but quotation marks because I find that people just like the journey or you know they want to see you more on a personal level. So I'm very careful about what I put out there. So if you are using facebook when you go on that party, make sure you first you wait until the next morning to post those photos one hour after rule is what you're saying you'll give yourself a day or an hour think about it absolutely so I want you to be you know, because you are now a brand if your business owner everything you do is a brand and so what goes out there has to be carefully monitored, so if you want to vent, please call your best friend on the phone where there's no record on it twitter off course twitter is is another one of those for quick feedback thing, as you know, but twitter is a lot of noise there's only about one percent that one percent off your audience actually reads your tweets so, you know, in their certain eddie cared for for twitter and we can't really go entirely into the social media I'm just wanting I just want you to know about all the different tools and brain storming off course without the people like a lot of what we're doing right now and you see how valuable this is there's masterminds, there's you know, groups where you do this on a regular basis, people you know, victoria said I held her accountable, accountabilities huge and I will hold you accountable don't worry about this I, uh there will be you will be asked to commit to, you know certain things and you will same out loud, so that way we, you know, put it in writing again in the workbook and of course we've talked about the research I'm going to show you something so testing by blogging what's very interesting to me I have and what I have not on here I just had a post go absolutely viral which had over thirty five hundred reads in twenty four hours on lincoln so linked in now has started lincoln's worked really well for me because I you know by market to other professionals so they have there creating now something's called a long form content providers so you can be followed as a person you can have a company page you can also follow us you to your company page and you can also do um you can also blawg on the forum which is owning beta testing so I'm one of the beta testers so you know, I'm one of the early adapters and I just love it, you know? And I have my big groups on lincoln and you know that not blogging over them and what I found is that if we look at these numbers what you see right on here what could you tell me? What do you think? What what does this tell you? Anybody want to give it a shot when it has a number that has a right so we have on the top you say the top ten characteristics of entrepreneurs we had two hundred ninety four page views and three lives one comment why women into a new leadership model fifty two pitch is how to get your mojo back seven hundred twenty two ten ways to conquer your fear sixty eight the choice to pursue happiness fifty to preventing burnout forty one I have it harder than you do thirty five three steps to break negative patterns one fifty four and the other one I wrote was why social media doesn't work for you and that is the one that had the three thousand five hundred views so does this tell me something about what works and what doesn't work absolutely yeah it does mean you get a sense of, um the word count of the words you're using of what people are engaging with can you tell how people will share it as well? Yes so basically under my name on linked in you you just look me up on lengthen on a br tish lead follow me and then you get notified whenever I do something so the following is really, really, really important and then you see the block posts I wrote and I um you know and then you can see whatever I think it's been only doing it for like, three, three weeks or something like that and so the results are pretty pretty astonishing what I do is I don't send the traffic to my website other than each article has what's called a back link so when you do blawg make sure that there's two links in your articles one goes to a high traffic high profile website and we will talk about this in detail in in another segment I'll take you through the whole I have it actually outlining is in the work books in my whole blogging strategies and there the amplification processes in their kids to excess about this stuff because to me this is the most important things of a thing of everything is like how do you even know what works so when I get data this quickly I know exactly that um the women leadership model well I think it's a really great idea cleveland clearly not a lot of people think about it like that so I know that I may have to do a little bit of more we'll work to get that sort of in the mind sets of people but when I talk about why social media doesn't work and I have three thousand five hundred people with what twenty comments it's been shared three hundred eighty times now I know I had a hot topic hot button and it's important for us to you know to follow that route and you know you keep testing and trying until you see sort of what works doesn't make sense go ahead james could you repeat the the um the two websites that you would have on your block would oh, I was a high profile what? Okay, I can uh it's okay, we can go through that really quickly so each block post that you ride should have two links. So one link so you say in the sentence something like um and you know people women that have frequent headaches and then that links to a website that's whatever md dot com where it's about the common symptoms off headaches so you link into high high profile in a high traffic website? Why? Because it improves your ceo ranking because now you're connected to this other website that is very reputable please do not look for web sites that nobody goes to find websites like you know all prize always good having composed is always good uh, the new york times like reputable sources and link back your article to them so that when people read it they can go and get an additional information, something you talked about it's also adding your credibility. The second link goes to another article in your own blogging fear and you're on your own website. So what I did with this article thie when social media doesn't work for you I did only one link because I didn't really want them to go to another website because I'm not creating traffic for my website I wanted to have only one back link in there and that was the back link too the this course to the creative life course because that's at that time you know what was the most emphasis that's what I was promoting and I said well for example only when I do life events like this one link is when I do such and such and such and such again saddle seating but the information is in there and then when people that all wonder what just do it then they can go and and find out so two links one link to your own website and one ling tau a high profile website do we have any other questions? Shall we just check with our hosts good one thing I'm curious about would you wait for example the likes and the comments in terms of this for example I have to get your merger back has obviously got the highest page views but would you then look to see his course that also has the highest likes because that might tell you that people really responded to the content I mean, do you find yourself in a situation where yeah, this got lots of clicks but in fact they didn't really engage. So are you using both as a measurement? Yes, yes that's ah that's a very long winded question for yes, thank you well sometimes we just can't make it really easy yes so any kind of engagement that's the key to everything it's about making sure something comes back to you and at first I found that in social media this the way works when you first go out there people go like what do you have no right to be here and they challenge you then you stay out longer and then they start to get really quiet nothing's happening it's really good scary like it's you know dead calm nobody gets back to you with anything and you go I'm a sock I fail I'm a failure nobody talks to me but what they're really doing and my brother told me that my big brother he said b r t I think they're listening at least they're not talking back or challenging you so they're all listening and then the third step is the engagement starts and then you get the feedback in the communication and the fourth is they become your defenders so then somebody's out there in a forum and they say that bot I don't even know what the heck she's talking about and then someone steps and you don't know what you're talking about just been doing this for you she's she's creating great value for creative entrepreneurs and you better be quiet and I'm like I don't even have to do this anymore because now you know you get to the point where others defend you because you've proven your value which is very, very, very, very powerful talk about social proof there's a service out there by name of clout k l o ut and cloud is a I'm not really sure what their business model is, to be honest with you, but it's kind of cool, so so so cloud basically takes all of your socio you hook all of his social media into clout, and then somehow they put some sort of a formula this unknown to anybody, and it spits out a number and it says this is how important you are in the internet, and I have actually heard that some businesses, uh, where some of the high profile blogger, when you want to become a guest blogger and we'll talk about the blogging stripped that in the blogging strategy will not go with anybody with less than a sixty cloud score. So mine's pretty consistent about sixty four, sixty five um, you know, up and down and, you know, it goes up a little bit, goes down a little bit, so I don't pay what you link with it, too. Yes, I realize that my klout score was really low, and I think their business model is to make you feel really bad. If your score is not low on, then they'll have advertisements of things that make you really happy and you click on them and they feel better um, no, I don't know, but yeah, it does. It's really a kind of an interesting service, but it's dependent on how you use it too. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, good, good, good point. So she yes, if you feel bad that your cloud scores low and believe me, you have to be somebody on the internet. Why? Because the baby boomers are taken eighty percent of the information from their computers if they even on them. But the bad news about the baby boomers is we having some fall off on the upper end. So the baby boomers are now, you know, getting older and they're not as heavily participating in some of the, you know, the new commerce generation. Why is what we also called the screw generation? Because they came in when the house prices were the highest when there were no jobs when they're the first ones where the weather you know, get the education and then don't have a job, it hit them hard, then you know, generation x and the millennials. So the millennials now take eighty percent of the information on their smartphones, so it's become really important they're on the phone all the time. The number says that eighty percent of all college graduates never touched another book in their lives. But they may be reading it on their smartphones. You know. I mean, I don't know if the number miss it actually touching a book. But it definitely means that they're not reading it on. You know, like, with the visit with a book and going in books or buying a book store, sell every business to be successful. You need to engage no matter who. Your clientele is in different layers and levels. So you built up the next generation off buyers, even if you start with the baby boomers and as a lucrative mark, very lucrative market, because they have a lot of money. But, you know, you need to always be engaging for the new audience and that's. Why I'm so into this type of stuff and the technology aspect so interested in and sharing this with you, because we need to know this.