Lessons

Lesson Info

How to Find the Gap in Your Market

We got into, and I don't wanna pass over this 'cause this is a big deal, like people are like, Jasmine, my market is so saturated. Guess what baby boo, every market is saturated. You ain't a special snowflake. So you can sit there and say, "I can't win, my market is so saturated." Or you can say "My market is saturated just like everybody else's market "is saturated and I'm still gonna stick out." So, let's move on from there. What one thing that we did was we found a gap in the market for Highway 3. Because truth be told we said they sell stuff that thousands of other people sell. They didn't hand stitch their personalized blankets. Other people are selling personalized blankets and towels. How then do they stick out? We found a gap in the market and now I'm gonna walk you through how you can find the gap in the market 'cause this is how you stick out in a saturated market and then we're gonna walk through the exact same example we did with Caitlyn. So we saw it done, we're going to d...

o it, and then we're going to repeat it. Three times over. So, how you find a gap in the market, we're gonna break it down in three lists. This should take you about 15 minutes, I'm gonna be straight out with you, 15-20 minutes. Number one, make a list. You're gonna make a total of three lists. List number one: make a list of ten leaders in your industry. And when you write down X, Y and Z, I want you to also list what type of content are they sharing on Instagram or pick the platform of your choice. I'm just gonna use Instagram because it's my lovechild right now. So, what type of content are they sharing on Instagram, and then ask yourself "Do I like the content that they're sharing?" We're looking at the leaders, the game changers, the people who are at the top of the pyramid, what are they sharing, do I like it? If I don't like it, why don't I like it? What are they not sharing that should be shared? So, you're looking at the top of the pyramid, saying this is what they're sharing, I either like it, or I don't like it, and then you're going to ask yourself, "What's missing?" The minute you find out what is missing, you then have a big gap to say, "I'm gonna create content that "I wish I saw the leaders creating." List number two, list ten inspirational accounts. These are people who are not, they could be, or they most likely will not be, inspirational accounts. Accounts you just like, whenever they come up in your feed, you're like yes, I just love this Instagram story, I love what they post. I want you to list 10 inspirational accounts, and list what type of content they are sharing on Instagram. Now, do not get in your head about this. Literally, list what they're talking about. Their home baking recipes, their children, their dogs, where they vacation, their fashion, their accessories, whatever it is, and why you like it, list that. And, once you list what it is, then say huh, is this educational? Is this empowering? Is it helpful? Is it humorous? Is it entertaining? Identifying why you like that account is such a linchpin to actually creating content that your people wanna see. And then you're gonna say, why do I like their Instagram account? Okay. We have list number one, the leaders in your industry, we have list number two, accounts that you find inspirational. Now, the way we were able to find a gap in the market for Highway 3 and Indigo Tide Market is before we actually met in person I said, hey guys, make a list of ten accounts you like, make a list of ten leaders in your industry. 'Cause I had to do the work. Because I can't work on you one on one, You're gotta do the work but now you know exactly how to do it. The third list of three is to list the content that you want to create that will position you as an industry leader. So how do you do this? Well you look at what the industry leaders are creating, you look at it and say what are you missing, and then you pair it with the stuff that you actually stinkin' like on Instagram. Then it becomes authentic, then it becomes differentiated, then it becomes entirely your stinkin' own in a saturated market that helps you find the gap and then stick out like the beautiful sore thumb that you are. So, that did not make sense. I think it sounded good, like nobody is a beautiful sore thumb. So we'll find out a better way to say that. But the lists are number one, list ten industry leaders, the kind of content they're producing. List number two, ten inspirational accounts to see if you could reproduce on your own level. And number three, list the content you want to create that will position you as an industry leader by point of differentiation. Now what we're going to do, so you saw the assessment we did with Highway 3. We saw how we pointed out the gap in the market. I taught you how you too can find the gap in the market. Now we're gonna go into Indigo Tide market assessment and watch how we found the gap in her market. We're gonna play that video now. We just came off Highway 3, we went through e-business, and social media kind of like, analysis, kind of like, getting grounded for what we were to expect. I also had the opportunity amazingly with Creative Live, to work with a product based business and a service based business and we also had the luxury to juxtapose a large existing account to a brand new just starting out social account. We're gonna be moving in now to Indigo Tide Market. Caitlyn has a personal Instagram account, Caitlyn has other Instagram account. Instagram isn't new to her, but Instagram is new to Indigo Tide Market. So we're creating a complete juxtaposition. So, what we've done, service based, product based, large pre-existing audience, new pre-existing audience. So wherever you are in your business in this quadrant, I want you to start saying oh, I'm closer to this end, I'm closer to this end. So, we're gonna dive in to Caitlyn's. It's not gonna be as long because we're starting off from the bare bones base, so we can only go up from here. Like I'm just gonna like reference Drake started from the bottom now we're here. (laughing) Okay, lets dive into Indigo Tide Market. So when I arrived to your website this is what I saw. Indigo Tide Market Mapping Out Your Next Amazon Sale, great. I scrolled down the page and I got to an About Us section and the founders section, I scrolled down to What We Can Do For You, Marketing, Customer Help, Optimization, Retail Orders, and I read all of the subsections, but when I tried clicking on those sections, they didn't go anywhere. It was just, okay, just wanted to make sure. And then we got into the Get In Touch. So what I felt was a three part website. We got into the bulk of it which is who you are, and kinda sorta touched on what you did, but didn't get into any of the services. You could've, the equivalent could be like I play baseball. Okay. Right, because it's like, when you talk about marketing and then three sub points, well what do you do? Like people want to know what am I buying, why am I coming to you. And so I had an opportunity to talk to Laura, the producer for this class and we said a lot of times that I've discovered when I talk to business owners is people are buying out of two emotions, pleasure or pain. I believe that moms are buying blankets and pillows and towels, pleasure. Why is somebody on Amazon going to be hiring you? Pain. Pain. So what we wanna do, is we don't wanna say, like your life sucks, you're never gonna succeed we're going to frame it as in we know the struggle of trying to get your business seen on Amazon. Have you ever felt being overwhelmed with so many skews that you really don't know which one you should be focusing on. We want people to be like "Yes, yes, yes." You're gonna be like "We help, 15 minute session." Like you wanna go to where are your pressure points, that's what you specialize in, okay. Okay, sounds good. Great. So then, we had one exit link on the website, in the lower right hand corner we see a link to Instagram. So indigotidemarket on Instagram. When I went to the account, there was one post, three followers, and you were following six people. Now lucky for us that one post was your application. Your one post was your application to come to this course! Okay. So for the people who don't know how this actually came to fruition, had the ability to collaborate with Creative Live, they did all of the logistics, they put out the calls, like we had a ton of stuff going on. And then I got a very short list of candidates that kind of ticked a bunch of different boxes, and Caitlyn was one of those people that were kind of like huh, what do we do with this business owner, this business owner who has virtually no social media presence. And I loved it because this is an opportunity for so many people who are saying I wanna start a business, I don't know if I am enough, if I know enough, if I can do enough. And I wanna show what Caitlyn can do in 30 days to give inspiration to people who are out there wondering can they do it too, and the answer is yes you can, and which takes us to yes you will. Cool, I talked to Caitlyn, and I said are you on Facebook? And you said, what did you say when I asked? I said yes I made a new page not that long ago. Okay, great 'cause when I searched for you, you weren't on Facebook, 'cause I searched for Indigo Tide Market. Yeah, yeah, as in not long ago 24 hours ago. (laughing) Okay great, great. Okay so at the time I was like I know I did my research. So, you did start a Facebook fan page, which I think is amazing, because I strongly feel that your customers are on Facebook. Okay, I was like I don't know like, No I strongly feel, I strongly feel we had, remember we had to pick an age. And 35 year olds statistically are on Facebook, but they're also on Facebook for very different reasons. We can get into the nuisances in a second. So, what we're looking at right now is Indigo Tide Market. The branding is on point, it matches the website, and there's one person who likes this page, we're only going up from there. Initial start, the initial thought is just get started. That's all we gotta do right now. Yup. So people at home who are just like, well Jasmine I only have 100 followers, well that's 99 more than you and watch what you're gonna do! I know right, you guys are winning! I know, haha, okay. So question that you wanna catalog is what do you want your followers to say about your accounts. Like when these people are coming across like you have to follow her because this. Does it need to be one word or can I just-- Oh yeah, go ahead, talk it out. Okay, so I want 'em to follow me, I feel like since I'm doing marketing for someone on Amazon I also have to look like I know how to market myself so I guess I want them to see that I can market and make things look beautiful or make them look like you wanna buy it. But at the same time I also want them to touch on those pressure points and the pin points and so I need to be more informative and just be like this is what's going on. Great, I love it. Word of caution, I have no idea where you are because I have nothing to measure. I have no barometer. Yeah. It doesn't have to be perfect. And that's where I started. I know, I smell that, I smell from a mile away. I can teach you everything we do. Like no problem doing that. But don't bring me into it. Because I'm like, I don't know. Like, what if I like mess it up? And that's silly because we move forward. What we really wanna focus on now is we have a product based business. And we have a service based business. We have a large following. We have a smaller following. And I don't wanna spill. I don't wanna spill, I don't know, is it like spill the beans, spill the milk, whatever. I don't want to spill any food quite now. But I will say that Caitlin said one of her pressure points, watching this video right now, 'cause it's been a while since I've watched this video. Been like 30 days since I watched the video. She said I want people to look at my account and say she knows how to use social media to market herself. And in the past month, she's had a client say can you run our social media accounts? What we say becomes our reality. But until we have the courage to say it, we will never know the direction that we're going. That was just one baby step, a little breadcrumb to say you're doing it, continue doing it. So no matter what type of business you have, we have, who you are, what you're selling, and who you are selling to. We are about to go into a break. But I have just a couple minutes for Q&A. Because we just kind of went through like a dense area like finding a gap in your market. Knowing to who you're selling and we're like we just got started baby. Do we have any questions right now? Okay, so, Michelle, okay. The production team puts up these things for me to read. And so it makes me feel awkward when I read like nice things about myself. Okay, thank you, Jasmine, biggest takeaway, what got me here won't get me to where I want to go, shout out to my mentor James Wetmore, who reminds me of that again and again. Because I have been raised in a very simple home. And change was never really a good thing. But change was thrusted upon us. We oftentimes we didn't have money, we were given groceries on our porch, we had government assistance, and whenever there was a change, it throw the family for a loop. So those childhood experiences left me as an adult to be like, nothing can change, 'cause then something changes it's never a good thing. And all I know now as an entrepreneur is that if it isn't changing, it isn't growing. So now I stand here and say, bring it on, bring it on, because change will come, you will either ask for it or it will be thrusted upon you. So instead of fighting it and trying to stand in the storm, run into the tidal wave and say I will remain undaunted, I know who I'm marketing to. I know my purpose. I know the gap in the market. I don't give a rip if you don't like my content, because one person will and when that one person does, he or she will tell seven other people and those seven other people will tell seven other people and my business will go farther with 200 followers on Instagram who know me, like me and trust me than trying to get 2000 people who don't give a rip about who I am, doing the same dang thing and scroll on, bye.