Strategies to Take on an Established Competitor

http://thenetsetter.com/blog/strategy/6-strategies-to-take-on-an-established-competitor/

by collistaeed • 17 years ago

54 13 17 years ago

swombat2• 17 years ago

This article is really good and the advice in it is excellent - and the font size is brilliant too :-)

The only wtf is the fact that the author thinks social news is dominated by digg, when in my view it's roughly split between digg and reddit (but maybe I'm wrong). Still, if HN gets a mention, reddit should too, really.

Excellent article nevertheless.

collistaeed• 17 years ago

Hey swombat, thanks for the feedback, that's a good point about Reddit, I was mostly just basing that on a graph I saw of traffic a while ago comparing the two. But to be honest we all know how inaccurate those things can be!

run4yourlives• 17 years ago

Last graph I saw, digg was miles ahead of reddit, so I don't think it's that far off.

Also, agreed with not just the font but the whole site - one of the prettiest I've seen in a while.

swombat2• 17 years ago

Digg is partly there because it cheats on its metrics. Every upvote counts as another visit.

In terms of actual traffic, last time I was dugg and reddited digg was only slightly ahead of reddit.

JayNeely• 17 years ago

A related article I'd like to see is how to take the lead in a divided market. My (unlaunched, in progress) startup is in a space where there are a three or four competitors with a large customer base, and a dozen or so others with significant ones. They're almost all offering the same (aged) feature set. But it's not like the service has become commoditized the way basic web hosting has.

I feel like we're going to have strong differentiators, and a much easier time getting adoption from the slice of the market not already using one of our competitors. But what's the best way for us to get all the people who have sunk their money and time into a competitor's service (and its learning curve)?

markessien3• 17 years ago

This post is giving bad advice. It sounds like good advice, but it's bad advice. Let's say I'm looking to buy an FTP client. What do I do? I'll search for FTP client on google, take a look at the first 5 clients, download and install the ones that look interesting and have about the same feature set, then buy the one that is easiest to use/and or cheaper.

New customers coming into a market do not have preconceptions about who is the biggest or the best! That's the fundamental flaw in the argument.

The correct way to take on an established product is:

1. Offer all their features

2. Make sure you are visible on the same locations as they are

3. Offer more value for the money

4. Be more convenient and or easy to use

nreece4• 17 years ago

  1. Offer all their features

On the contrary, I think the initial approach should be simpler than that - underdo your competition - http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch02_Build_Less.php

markessien3• 17 years ago

Give 5 examples where this has worked (also with less marketing).

callmeed• 17 years ago

Great article. I actually asked a similar question here a while back (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=345651).

Nice job ...

On a side note, my only complaint is your analysis of iStockPhoto's quality compared to expensive stock players. IMO, most microstock (while good enough for many people's needs) isn't on par with professionally produced stock photography and many people can see a difference. Plus, if you say that in a room of professional photogs, you're likely to get a beat down :)

nreece4• 17 years ago

I wonder how the strategy will change if I were to take on not just an established competitor, but a market leader, say Facebook or SAP ERP.

Strategies to Take on an Established Competitor

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