Entertainment Content Driven Sales Funnel

You know this really colorful funnel above like the back of your hand. It’s right there, ingrained in your head every time you do up a business plan or work out a marketing strategy. It’s the core of every sales pitch, every marketing collateral, every advertisement, every public relations plan, and there’s just one focus- to drive your customers to the Action stage.

We do apply the same funnel at Lauric, except we make it more relevant to what we do.

And if you’re thinking, “What? Why are you messing it up? This WORKS! This friggin’ WORKS! What the shit are you guys doing?! Why do you even bother?!”

That’s because what we do is Entertainment Content and in Entertainment Content, we’re dealing with more than a product or a singular product line. We’re dealing with Stories. All kinds of stories.

 

We’re dealing with Characters. Characters that are timeless. Characters that speak to us and convey their message to us. Characters with names that are synonymous with what they do *think James Bond* *think Superman* *think Iron Man*. Characters whom we admire and wish we could emulate. Characters that evoke our emotions, characters with whom we want involved in our own lives, whom we want to see every day, whom we can share with our friends and forge new friendships with.

Bless social media. With it, we get to tell our story in a way like no other. We can write an article about it. We can shorten it to a couple of paragraphs. We can include a video with all those words. We can load a graphic on its own or with a video or everything together. We can toss in a simple game. We can pop in one of those fun tests that everyone loves to play. We can go long text or shorten everything we want to say in 160 characters and a compelling picture. But what matters most is a good story, and inside a good story, captivating characters that do stuff, eat stuff, wear stuff, use stuff. Time and time again in these stories, they produce solutions to resolve problems and halt world crises- with… stuff.

Which is why our sales funnel starts with the Audience stage, followed by Lead, then Prospect follow by the Customer stage and finally, the Evangelist stage.

At the Audience stage, we decide on the right audience- and we drop them a teaser- with the right distribution. In Entertainment, we release the first trailer. In Entertainment Content, we make a headline. We make a poster. We release a graphic still. We drop hints. We use our channels- traditional and digital- to distribute seemingly varied messages with a consistent theme that triggers feelings and emotions and we nudge that theme out just that little bit more every time. 

Then we’re at the Lead stage. In Entertainment, we drop Trailer #2. In Entertainment Content, we engage the audience. We reveal more messages. We release more hints. Still the same consistent theme, but now we sink the line. With questions, with what-ifs, with new stills, with more hints about the characters revealed in the Audience stage. We reveal parts of the puzzle. We provide answers if only to raise more questions. We hint on the stuff they use. Characters share with the audience more bits of what they do- the thrilling parts- just so to let them wonder what that was all about and how the Characters got there.

Until the Prospect stage where we reach the junction that product and the audience’s need meet. Entertainment calls it “Out In Theaters” or “See It in 3D”. This is the stage in Entertainment Content where we convert the audience into a prospect. By presenting them with the opportunity to buy. By having the Characters (and ourselves) to speak to you. This is the space to be personal. This is the stage where they (the characters) tell you what it is they use and why they use it and why it’s so good. When the audience already has the emotional connection with the characters as well as the products they represent, and right now, when the opportunity to purchase presents itself, they progress to become Customers. Entertainment Content can call it sales. Or upsell. Or product distribution. Or simply, a store that offers a range of products to complement the experience. So that the emotional connection with the Character can be completed.  

Then we’re at the Customer stage. The stage where the audience-turned-prospect is now converted into a customer. The stage where the customer joins our Characters into their universe. The stage where the product in their hands fulfills the questions they’ve previously asked and includes them in the roles that the Characters play and which has them entering the…

Evangelist stage. Some call it the Loyalist stage where the Customer transforms their status from User to Advocate, sharing, commenting, discussing, opinionating about the product and service.

At every stage, our Characters don’t stop the communication. They have lives, right, and the more intriguing their lives are, the more predicaments they get involved in, the more the audience is enraptured and the more they want to know how else such techniques and tools *your products or services* can be the/their solution.  

And what we’re saying- from Audience to Evangelist- is just a brief overview of how the funnel would looks like. But if there’s US$500 billion going through this funnel every year, for sure it works.

You just have to find out how.
If you find it doesn't make any sense, since content is mainly to drive awareness at the top of the funnel, we are glad you ask, as we will be explaining that next.

And yes, we do work with both internal and external Digital Marketing team, PR team and Media team to provide a comprehensive solution for clients and also recognizes their importance in realizing the value of Entertainment Content, especially in global deployment.  In this environment, Lauric does not merely utilize small content, but continually strives to plan, create and control high value content.  

 

Go Beyond Small Content Marketing

If you’re reading this, it means that somewhere along the way in your resource reading, something got you hooked. It could have been the visuals- that gloom-and-doom cover picture of dead leaves on our Facebook page or the drawing of the bird that forms part of our story-telling logo. It could have been the words ‘branding’, ‘marketing’, ‘strategy’, licensing’ or ‘content’ that drew your attention.

If you’re a content marketer reading this right now, you know what your eyeball means to our article- and to our page. And it looks like we are doing what’s termed as ‘Small Content Marketing’, you know, the whole gamut of tools that mark the trade- webpages, infographics, videos, blogs, pictures and so on, which, yes, we do, but small content marketing forms a *small* part of what we actually do.

What we do is, in fact, Entertainment Content.

Entertainment Content is really the business- the quantifiable value- the dollars and cents- of the world of Content itself. Entertainment Content is, basically, creating content that offers High Value.

A video creates very little value if the video garners no interest, no emotional resonance and no course of action- even if you’ve used the latest film technology or the most good-looking cast.

A blog article can spark off interest, but better the value if the article can make your reader ponder and reflect on what they’re doing or living right, or wrong and drive them to initiate change.

A web page is an excellent platform for information and to establish contact, but what brings in more value is if the page can keep the user coming back again and again and again for your product or service or, for some users, without even knowing precisely why.

We could give you five tips to better the tools of your trade. But there are already too many tips swimming around in the wide, wide ocean, so instead we’ll provide you five questions instead.  

1. Can your Youtube video, website, blog, pictures be    licensed? [Yes / No]  

2. Will anyone acquire your blog, video, song etc? [Yes / No]

3. Do you have distributors who will distribute your content [Yes / No]

4. Are your content assets and properly managed? [Yes/No]

5. Does your content requires legal and business support? [Yes / No] 

If you have answered mostly no to the questions above, you need to go beyond small content marketing and make the leap right into Entertainment Content. Why? Because the only benchmark in all of content creation is when people are willing to spend good money to consume it.

If they’re not, I tell companies to whom I speak with about content marketing, it means they still need to strive to this benchmark. All customized solutions at Lauric must meet this benchmarked too, before they are proposed to clients. 

Lauric Customized Solution

A fine example of Entertainment Content is The LEGO Movie. If you watched it in the theater or on Blu-Ray, you just paid money to watch a 100minute LEGO commercial.

Entertainment Content is no straightforward business. There’s stuff like licensing, acquisition, strategy, distribution, development, asset management and legal support to look at. But for starters, before you touch on all that, the first plunge to take is into the heart of it, and that’s Anthropomorphic Branding.

Come Dance With Diana

You can read more about it here, but in short, Anthropomorphic Branding goes beyond proposing the utilization of content simply for product tie-ups or associations. Instead, it involves morphing your product or service into a character that has hopes, dreams, struggles, emotions and purpose- all of which embody your product and what it does in resolving customers’ issues.  

And though you may not have the budget to make a feature film like LEGO did to promote your company, you can still utilize Anthropomorphic Branding to create high valuable content that resonates directly to your customers.

Next up, we will take you through an Entertainment Content driven sales funnel. Subscribe below and check back for more updates.   

COMICS AS PART OF YOUR CONTENT STRATEGY

There are two main objectives why Lauric Strategy+ Marketing was set up.

1.      To provide cost effective content solutions.

2.    To incorporate these solutions into the overall business strategy for Start-ups and SMEs.

It’s just this: We create a platform. You (Start-up and SME) leverage on the platform to introduce your product and service to the masses, your potential customers. With this in mind, Lauric has launched a graphic novel titled Shadow of Carthage: Angel’s Flight.

 

 

Yes, the graphic novel, or comic, as we are apt to put it, is the platform. Interesting though, that in the six months that we’ve been launching this platform, we’ve received from clients, and from self-titled marketing “gurus” a gamut of opinions, comments, and theories that tend to circle around a definitive dismissal of this platform as a legit marketing tool.

It’s a myth. Really.

It’s a myth that graphic novels aka comics are for kids and kids only.

It’s a myth that “adults don’t like them”, or that “they are not familiar with them”.  

Because THEY ARE NOT.

We could cite two renowned examples that today have grown from what were at one time comic publishing houses to the cinematic universes today that we see on theatrical screens but if you were to speak to their creators, they’d gladly tell you that they are still comic publishing houses and that comics are visual stories, and that though they won’t hold steadfast to the titles of visual storytellers or content creators, they have been, are, and will be respected as writers and artists of one of the most popular visual content ever available both in print and off-print.

Here at Lauric, we could easily work with our affiliated studios to do up a video for you, and we do have an affordable package for startups that meet the criterias but to really communicate effectively with your targeted audience, it would mean releasing one video a week, and yes, you could produce a viral video that will spread across the platforms like wildfire and make your company famous overnight. But behind every viral video is a team that manages the content distribution process and monitored the viral cycle and it isn’t only about uploading the video on one or more online platforms.  Neither is it sustainable for a start-up or SME to produce one video per week, or to invest thousands of dollars in something that might garner a lukewarm or worse, forgettable response.

We’re not saying that comics are a surefire guarantee (which communications strategy is?) but costs are cheaper, you can afford to experiment more, content can be curated to appeal to your target market… and then when your video gets released, you’ll have a ready audience awaiting it excitedly and eagerly.  

And to add on why comics as a marketing tool are effective…

1.    They stand out.

Low adoption rate (due to all the myths circulating around still) means your content will stand out from the crowd.

 

2.   They combine pictures with a story.

Infographics are great for information. But it stops right there at the bare-boned facts. Comics evoke strong emotions. Whether they like it or hate it, that’s an emotion and no other illustration can evoke them as much as comics do.

 

3.    They are cost effective

Digital storytelling at its simplest, minus the bells and whistles.

 

4.   They are perfect to communicate complex and abstract concepts.

When the plainest of products or services are personified or glamorized larger-then-life by comic artists, or when the most “unsexy” of processes are demonstrated with an entertaining blast of energy in the comic form, here’s where comics work best. Animation achieves the same effect too, but comics are cheaper- and faster to produce.

5.   You become personified.

You’re no longer putting anonymous smiling people backlit in bright sunlight and atmospheric light. Your company becomes a person with a name and a background in a place where he or she experiences emotions like you and I, where he or she has to face problems like you and I do and has to resolve them with whatever resources there are available.  Meaning that your company- and you- become more approachable to your potential clients right away.

 

6.   Comics and Social Media = ONE

Low bandwidth? No problem. Multiple devices? No problem.

7.   You are open to change and everyone will know it

Flexibility, agility and responsiveness are reflected entirely in a single, hand-drawn line. Now think of what multiple hand-drawn lines can do.

This is what comics can do. Combine the strategies of digital marketing, content marketing and SEOs onto a distinctive platform that is sustainable, that is cost-effective and which brings you higher returns of investment with lower risk exposure.

Lauric has the content.

Lauric has the marketing strategies and the distribution channels.

And it is all on a platform that has been created with you in mind, where you can incorporate your brand message, personify your brand identity, introduce your product and your service to an audience most critical of all- your potential customer.

 

ANTHROPOMORPHIC BRANDING: WHY IT WORKS

For some of us, that title up there might leave us a little puzzled. We might be wondering what on earth it is, why we haven’t seen it much before, what does it really mean, what can it do for me and my company and what does branding have to do with being anthropomorphic in the first place anyway?

It doesn’t matter if you’re unfamiliar with the word or if it sounds completely alien to your lingo. Chances are you’ve definitely seen it before. Even if you’ve never placed two and two together. You could be familiar with branding and not the other. Or, like someone who shared to me recently, and I quote: “Okay, anthropomorphic I definitely know, right... Branding I know. Put them together and I’m like, whaaat?”

You’ve seen the Energizer Bunny, haven’t you? You know, the one ad where the toy bunny goes about beating its drum rapidly and which seems to go on forever and forever and forever. Batteries and bunnies don’t seem to be a perfect match but now try disassociating the Energizer Bunny away from the Energizer batteries. Kind of hard, isn’t it? What about the Tiger in Kellogg’s Frosties? And the Michelin man?

That’s branding. Something that most of us are familiar with.

Anthropomorphic branding takes it one step further. This is a direction that calls for characterization, meaning that the visual now adopts a ‘life’ of its own. A life that represents what you do. A life that represents your values and your marketing messages.

At Lauric, our specialization lies with anthropomorphic characterization of your brand. We live it out through our own logo.

 

Such logos of consultancies are rare. It’s not as impressive or business-like as you’d normally expect it to be, isn’t it?

What you see are a Rat and a Crow enjoying a coconut.

The Rat represents the values of empathy, bonding, honesty, hard work and intelligence. The Crow represents the qualities of intelligence, care, shrewdness, good memory, sense of camaraderie & innovation. Both of them together represent the start-ups and the entrepreneurs- those whose qualities are aptly represented by the qualities of the rat and the crow in their natural environments; those who possess such qualities that already differentiate them from the rest of the pack.

Where is Lauric, then?

We’re the coconut.

We’re the coconut that wishes to work with entrepreneurs and startups that are rats and crows.

It’s not just the logos. It’s the whole essence of what you do. Let me introduce someone else.

This is Yurin- a man with a wife and daughters who works in an office job and is also a Protector Angel in Shadow of Carthage. Here’s the question: We know him. Okay, fine. We know what he represents. But why should we trust him? And how is he going to successfully convince me to pay more attention to the safety of my loved ones?

Good question. Here’s why:

1.   We love connections. We love connecting with people, and for some of us, we connect with everything and anything in our lives, even our possessions. When we don’t receive connections, we make them. We give handbags names. We give cars and boats and bicycles names. We give teddy bears and dolls names. We call them him or her.  

2.   We anthropomorphise to make sense of the world — and in some ways to exert some kind of control over it. Not just over ourselves, but also others as well. We not only want ourselves to determine what our thoughts are- we want to infer the same to others around us too. And we do handle the inanimate things around us in the same way. When someone says, “She’s in a mood,” he or she might not be referring to a female or a female animal. It could be a car. Or a lawn mower. Or the vacuum cleaner. Or the mobile phone. Or that perfectly innocuous glass of juice sitting on the counter.  

3.   We are human. To anthropomorphise is cognitive and automatic. Put a name, a face, an action to an inanimate object and automatically our minds associate that very action or that very face to the object, as if it were communicating to us.  

At Lauric, we go beyond the branding and branding associations. We create strategies, storylines and characters that invite your customers to think of your products as alive and living… and elicit positive reactions towards them. In other words, we give your products a face, a life, a background, a purpose, a mission, a living thing with values, goals and a future. We make your products likeable and trustworthy, and replicate the power dynamics of human relationships in your product, your brand.

Business Application

How then does this apply to my business, then?

If you believe that your product is a deserving one (and we’re sure you do), anthropomorphization can enhance its qualities and its trustworthiness. Take Google’s self-driving car for instance. Designed with “facial” features to put nervous “drivers” at ease, it makes the nerve-wracked drivers feel that they’ve got a chauffeur or valet of sorts- and they place their lives in the “hands” of their self-driving cars.  

Studies too do show that for products targeted to specific demographics, say, those who have a streak of cynicism in them, those that tend to be overly suspicious and untrusting, those who have perhaps endured some form of betrayal in their lives and have trouble trusting people… a well-crafted anthromorphized product can elicit positive reactions from them.

Yurin’s done that.

 

He’s more than just a mascot. He’s an ambassador of anthropomorphic branding. Talk to us and find others like Yurin who will be more than happy to be incorporated into your marketing strategy.

 

How Can I Help?

If we were to meet, you could ask me to teach you. You could ask me to coach you on the best strategies for your product, for your organization, for the various aspects of your business.

But I won’t.          

Not that I can’t do what you ask. I can. I’ve been in the educational business for over a decade, I’ve worked with trainers and coaches and lecturers and industry experts and now the educational arm is beginning new directives, so of course I do know the value of coaching.  

But the thing is, by the time you and I meet, you are already at war.

And you have no time to search for a coach.

What you need, when we meet, is a strategist.

One who asks probing questions to determine the organization’s state of ‘health’.

One who helps the leadership identify all of the options available to the organization.

One who decides which of those options are best to rule out, and which are best to pursue.

One who researches and reviews the findings with the leadership to help them establish a plan and then most importantly, solidify proactive, workable, relevant actions necessary to achieve their desired goals.

A Warfare Tactical Expert, that's what a strategist is, according to the Chinese texts found in Sun Tzu’s Art of War, a 战略家. 战 in Chinese means War- a situation you’re already in. What is a strategist supposed to do when there’s a war? Here’s the second character 略 which means Tactics. So, a strategist is someone you hire to develop tactics when you are at War. Good. But, who should you choose? Here the full word puts it in place for you. The character 家 suggests that he is an Expert. 

When you and I meet, you’re likely wondering to yourself how the heck you got here. You were doing everything right. You had the business functions firmly in place. You were managing it all so well. There was a friggin’ hell lot to do and it was all so optimistic. But there is no seemingly clear direction for further growth… and the costs aren’t stopping.

Or say, you’re in a situation whereby you’re pretty sure that getting the word out will generate customer interest and business revenue, and you’re willing to pump in the needed resources for sales, marketing and media communications. 
You are sure and you are not sure and you think... I need a coach. 
What a coach will do, is to be a (quick look at Chinese texts again) 教练. He will be the one who teaches (教) you and practices (练) with you every day. He will teach you and train you how to utilize all the tactics above. Which is a good thing, except that it takes time, it takes more than two or three meetings, it takes a coaching session, homework, another coaching session, more homework, more revision and another coaching session etc. etc .
You don’t have the liberty of time.

What you need right then is a strategist, a 战略家.

“Do you know where your marketplace is? Do you know who your market is? What are they? Who are they? Why should they buy you? What do you have that they will want? Is this all you’re going to do? What makes you think they’ll look at you? Why should they look at you? Is this your strategy, no, not your communications strategy, your overall strategy? Aren’t you deviating from your strategy? What are you gonna do if you deviate from it? What do you mean it will not happen? What if it happens? What are you going to do? Do you know what to do?”

And what he will say after all that is, that plunging deep into the tactics of SEO, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr or any other marketing and media platform without a proper overall strategy in place is akin to seeing your money, manpower, effort and time go down the drain.

A strategist is not a cheerleader nor a hand clapper. A strategist doesnt praise you nor affirm you. I don't. Instead I would probably challenge you with enough annoying, seemingly insulting questions to force you to forget the operations for a while and start asking yourself the necessary questions again. I don’t necessarily know your business, but truth is, you’ve got the answers. I just ask the questions and with your answers, I’d identify the possible avenues of growth. There will be a few meetings, of course, but I won’t stop there when all of us leave the meeting room. I’ll go away after the brainstorming session, assemble the relevant team guys, turn the information and ideas into something real, communicate it to you and execute it.

HOW MUCH DO YOU THINK MY AWESOME IDEA IS WORTH?

Not much.

Hard, painful truth but there you have it. NOT MUCH.

Every day I get numerous emails from entrepreneurs describing their newest ideas.

Because what you think is your brand new, exceptional, magical, out-of-this-world idea that no one has ever thought of ever before- is in fact, not as groundbreaking as you wish it were.

Every day there are emails in my inbox from numerous startups and entrepreneurs with vivid descriptions of their newest ideas. Sometimes the emails are mysterious, that is, they hint of an idea, or the potential of it without really talking about it but those are rare. What I do often read, fortunately, are ideas that are backed with deep rooted passion bordering on obsession. They dream big, really big, to the point that there’re plans for massive global expansion even before they’ve secured their very first customer.

Renowned, respected businessmen and entrepreneurs, whether during media interviews, conferences or seminars, speak easily about the very first deal that they signed, or the very first customer who walked into their shop, or the very first user of their services.

And that’s the whole point, that a dream stays a dream until it reaches its first committed user.

Venture capitalists aren’t going to invest in ideas and dreams. Take it from us. We work with some who represent the biggest firms in the world. They are constantly seeking out great entrepreneurs who offer out-of-this-world ideas, some even bordering on the bizarre, yet, when presented with a plan that focuses on implementation and execution; they value these individuals enough to listen.

Part of what they tend to look out for is not merely obsession. Every entrepreneur is obsessed to a relevant degree, but whether one who is obsessed with the idea alone or obsessed with executing the idea determines whether they pay attention. That’s not all, show them the carefully-thought-out plans, show them the beautifully-drawn-out graphics, show them the neatly-assembled statistics and collaterals and prototype, and then there’s always that one question that they throw out.

The one question that nearly all entrepreneurs hate, refute, defend or deny.

“What happens when all this, all these plans you’ve made, screw up?”

“What happens if no one wants this *fiddles with product* thing you’ve made?”

“What do you do if you get this *jabs at product* out and your market thinks it’s crap?”

 

Great entrepreneurs don’t waste too many hours talking and talking and talking about their ideas. That doesn’t mean they are less passionate. What they do is to spend their time translating that passion, that obsession, into your obsession. You- the one who never thought you wanted this thing. You- the one who didn’t even know you needed it. You- you’ve probably fantasized for a solution as this and who is now grateful that the product has at long last been created. It takes a certain real effort to do it, to execute it and these guys have their real users to show for their work- users who validate their product, users who want what they’ve done. They don’t stop there. They think about building upon it. They think about sustaining what they’ve built and they acknowledge that they’re ready to rinse and repeat over and over again until their product reaches the quality that their users demand, until their product satisfies the practical needs of their users and turns them into loyalists.

So to answer that question about how much your awesome idea is worth?

Not much.

What then should I do to increase its valuation?

Get busy.

 

 

REALITIES

You can read as many management, marketing and financial texts as you want. You can go earn a diploma, an advanced diploma, a degree, a postgrad till you achieve an MBA. But nothing will prepare you enough for the shock when you realize that despite after all those years of mugging and churning and examinations, the reality of doing a business needs you to get back to the basics.

Right from the bottom where you’ve got an idea and right there and then you’ve got to accept, like it or not, that the idea itself is meaningless. Debunks the entire spirit of entrepreneurship, doesn’t it, when everyone says that you ought to dream, ought to think big, ought to be steadfast, ought to look at matters out of the box and ought to do this and that.

But the basics hold true.

Attaining that MBA qualification I haven’t (maybe I will… and I should) but what I do know is that when I was building my first startup, a good number of years were spent clinging fervently to the original concept of that idea, protecting it vehemently and ignoring with donkey-like stubbornness the signals that the market pulsated out- each sign, each signal warning me that the mission needed to evolve and change.

Simply because I believed that my idea was at the very least 50% of the value of my company.

It hasn’t been too bad. Much could have been done better, faster, more effectively, more strategically, but the Media & Entertainment Industry is a highly competitive, frighteningly cut-throat one, and we’re still around.

Experience teaches you quicker, faster and more instantaneously than the academia, that’s a fact, and one of the earliest lessons I picked up was that an idea is nothing more than a theory or theories that needs to be proved, or disproved. Basically, gut feels and beliefs do need to be tested and if they make it through the fire, let’s set it down as an idea. If I thought I knew it for sure, to be proven wrong did not take long and it was not until I chose a factor for trial testing and then having it pass did a new direction take place.

I suppose I’m the sort that well, attempts (doggedly) to enter new territories. Or at least I try to do things differently. So I chose to enter a market providing a niche that others were less likely to pursue. If the competition wanted a job in Media & Entertainment for the all-fun-and-no-work perspective and the celebrities and the parties and were going around sharing that dream job of creating games apps, I realized I needed a collaborative effort to talk about the real jobs involving artists, grips, lighters, set painters and set builders, of long hours, intensive game programming and obsession with details which had its own sort of rugged charm. My business was never a means of social validation anyway.

 

When execution is the key to building your business, you recognize that whatever ideas you’ve had need to be verified. Everyone can nod their heads and offer you praiseworthy statements, but seek them out for their honest opinions, place them in an idea evaluation group and you might just get a smorgasbord of opinions and suggestions that significantly differ from what you thought. Point is, share the idea openly with the right mix of people and you can choose afterward whether you want to take on their honest, unadulterated opinions. Better to have some, than to have none. Choose the right mix of people though. You’ll need smart, passionate people from diverse industries with a deep understanding of entrepreneurship and the processes themselves. Charge them with identifying and solving problems and encourage them to be candid by leaving the responsibility and authority part entirely out. That decision effectively changes the dynamics of the group. They’ll find themselves at liberty to offer expertise, to discuss, to debate, to expand, to revise, to agree or to disagree. If they’re actively challenging each other, well, you’ve got the right team.

The second time the concept for another niche product came to mind, I was ready to acknowledge that though in my head, whatever I was wanted to launch seemed insightful, there was the certainty that others too already had the similar idea. But I was determined that it was not going to remain at that initial phase. I wanted the idea to reach the roll-out phase and so since I was going to reach out to a specific market, it would deem wise to listen to the market. No more clinging on to the “perfect” idea, and no more waiting for that “perfect” idea to materialize at an unforeseen time, no more digging in and sticking to the plan despite repeated suggestions and feedback from the market. Instead I was going to do what I wish I’d done earlier that first time. I was going to be as introspective as I had learned to be, be open to whatever was being told to me, check it with the original idea, evolve it if needed and as had happened, there would emerge opportunities that this new startup would be able to capitalize on.

Every industry has competition. No matter how significant, how niche you believe your idea is, there will be competitors, if not today, then tomorrow, if not tomorrow, then the day after and the day after that. You can change, pivot, and react as much as possible but they’ll be there. And they won’t be going away.

Try negotiation with the competition instead- the art of which many seek to attain and which title many attempt to claim. To do that, toss away any cliché that you’ve been told about your idea, your business, your concept, your product. Slim possibility there will be that that whoever’s lauded you knows full well what’s out there in the market. If you’re a new business in a very new industry, or as they call it, a burgeoning one, your competition could well become your partners. Not everyone, perhaps, but at least one or two. Market intelligence and research on all of the competitors come first, determine your weaknesses, prepare your statistics and data and presentation plans and get ready to convince them that it’s mutually beneficial for everyone involved Because all of you could have the same goals and the same vision, but if both of you have no leads, no customers, you’ll face an upmarket task pursuing the customers who’ve no idea what you’re talking about and wear a look of utter disbelief because simply they’ve never heard of you and what you do before, they don’t think they need you and there’s no one to vouch for you anyway. You don’t want to wait a decade long before your customers finally realize that you’re legit now, and that oh, you were legit when you talked to me years ago.