Reddit reviews Blue Ocean Strategy, Expanded Edition: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant
We found 7 Reddit comments about Blue Ocean Strategy, Expanded Edition: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Harvard Business Review Press
Impossible to name one. Books only had significance for me when they addressed a particular lifecycle that the business was in.
EDIT: Lots of requests for more books as they relate to 'business lifecycle'. Also, linked all of these on Amazon. Here ya go:
Epic content marketing might help you look at content from your blog to provide you with alternate methods of presenting it (infographics, videos, slide share presentations).
I liked the ideas found in Blue Ocean Strategy towards the beginning, but for whatever reason was never able to go past chapter 5.
Books and the blog of Seth Godin or alternatively Basecamp (formerly known as 37 signals) are usually fun, quick reads.
Blogs by KISSMetrics, Zendesk, Hubspot, and following Growth Hackers threads are all good options too.
What does your SaaS do?
Lastly, something that can provide guidance is taking an hour or two to draw your message map. Essentially, it's a list on one side of your target audience at each stage of purchase, what you want them to takeaway from your message and what are the main barriers to them understanding that message.
Best of luck!
Edits: Was on phone; added links for the lazy.
Hello hackpro,
Couple things I would initially suggest. Read these 2 books:
1.) The Blue Ocean Strategy: A "red ocean" is a market where a product or service is already manifested, aka saturated or even oversaturated. A "blue ocean" is walking into that market and changing the game. This book has a TON of great tips and mindset pointers when trying to do what you do. Here is the Amazon link:
http://www.amazon.com/Blue-Ocean-Strategy-Expanded-Uncontested/dp/1625274491/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1459345146&sr=8-1&keywords=blue+ocean+strategy
2.) Growth Hacker Marketing: This book is just plain awesome. I have read it 3 times. It goes through quite a few tactics to get your product/service visable and has some great case studies (dropbox, evernote etc.) showing how they made it with little to no marketing, but rather pushing their products via exclusivity and making smart calculated moves. Here is the amazon link for that:
http://www.amazon.com/Growth-Hacker-Marketing-Primer-Advertising/dp/1591847389/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1459345183&sr=8-1&keywords=Growth+hacker+marketing
Post the above 2 books - I would really try to niche market your product. If you do not have a budget for paid search or media, I would focus on finding small to medium communities, join those communities and talk about your product, get sugggestions from community members, offer free beta tests (not sure what your product is, but you mentioned dropbox so I am assuming its software related) etc. Then, move up to larger communities/bloggers etc.
Content is king. Make TONS of content about your product (articles, video, etc.) and get it in cycle in your focus niche. I would focus on a message that sets you apart. You mentioned that the competition is mediocre, so in a creative "non bashing way" just highlight your strong points.
Just my initial $0.2 cents. If you have any deeper questions feel free to let me know.
-Rob
I recommend [Blue Ocean Strategy](Blue Ocean Strategy, Expanded Edition: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant https://www.amazon.com/dp/1625274491/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_fNpJybKTNDM86). It's a great marketing book but is especially relevant for entrepreneurs. It's one of the only required readings I held on to from college (marketing major). Really makes you think differently about innovation.
Podcasts:
Books:
I hear "race to the bottom dollar" a lot and I recommend reading the book Blue Ocean Strategy. It helped me find uncontested marketspace.
Second, I think video is going towards virtual and augmented reality. Editing footage in 360 degrees is my prediction for the future. Good luck with everything!
As far as targeting is concerned, I would recommend focusing on a single niche. This will help you to modify and change your sales message and offerings to be catered to the very specific needs of your niche, which can only help you to get more consultations within that niche, and even raise your prices considerably.
The reason niche-ing down works is because almost no one else actually markets to a niche, and they end up competing with so many other people that have the exact same message they usually have to compete on price to get clients to buy from them over others.
If you'd like to learn more about this principle, read the book called, "Blue Ocean Strategy, Expanded Edition: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant", by W. Chan Kim