How Do I Stand Out in a Crowded Space?
How do you stand out in a crowded market filled with content similar to yours? How can you carve out a niche and create the opportunity to do the work you really want to do?
Amber was asking herself this question. Amber is creating a course in our Create 6-Figure Courses® community and asked, “I started to work on my course idea. Now, I see other people who are offering something similar. I’m so discouraged, and I’m not sure if I should keep going and create this course. How do I stand out in a crowded space? What do you think?”
This shows up for all of us when we’re creating something new. It shows up the first time you create an offer and it will show up the tenth time you create a new product. The minute that you start thinking about creating an offer, suddenly it’s like everybody out there is creating the exact same thing or they already have that thing launched.
I had the same experience when I went to launch my first online course. It was probably a couple weeks before I was about to launch and I was knee deep in getting everything done and really excited about launching. Then, BAM, I see in my Facebook feed one day this announcement for a course that was–in my mind–entirely similar to what I was creating.
You’ve got to be kidding, right? I’m about to launch and the idea’s already been done. What do I do?
At that point, I was so far in. I had no choice but to figure out how to stand out in a crowded space. I regrouped and looked at my launch strategy and zoned in on how I could stand out.
I’m really glad that I did because that course went on to deliver multiple 7-figures in revenue to my business.
Two things I discovered in figuring out how to stand out in a crowded space:
- Competition can be a good thing. Having competition in your space can be a really good thing because it means there’s a market for what you’re doing. The key is to figure out how to get out of the crowd and carve out a niche for yourself.
- You have to get clear on your point of difference. To define a profitable niche, you have to do some exploration around what makes you unique and how that uniqueness can help your clients.
How to stand out in a crowded market by focusing on your point of difference
It’s easy to play it safe and blend in with what everyone else is doing because when you are in or entering a crowded market:
- You likely have an inbox filled with promotional emails from people doing similar work and you are constantly feeling pulled to mirror what they are doing.
- You are trying to figure out how to differentiate your offer by making small changes in your content, bonuses, tools, etc. that are invisible to your prospective clients.
- You want to appeal to as many people as possible so you are tempted to make your offer broad.
None of this works.
Instead, to win in a crowded space, you need to swim out of that crowded, competitor-filled ocean and find yourself a nice pond that you can be the big fish in.
3 Steps to Standing Out in a Crowded Space
Step 1: Narrow your audience.
Think about choosing a sub-set audience. For example, instead of working with all business owners in the world, choose a slice of this market such as “solopreneurs”.
Step 2: Narrow the problem you can help them solve.
Instead of solving a broad problem, think about how might you solve a more specific problem. For example, instead of solving a problem like “How to market better?”, you can choose to solve a problem like “How to get coaching clients on LinkedIn in the next 30 days?”
Step 3: Offer a unique method for solving that problem.
Get clear on how your approach is different and share how you can equip others to use your method to create their own success. Instead of teaching what everyone else is teaching, emphasize your unique spin. What do you do differently that enables you to get better results.
The Formula for Standing Out in a Crowded Market
Narrow Audience + Narrow Problem + Unique Method = Winning Offer
This is the formula to stand out in a crowded market — any market. In our community, we have experts in all areas including in art, beauty, wellness, education, technical training, parenting, relationships, and hundreds of other topics who are using this approach to creating winning online courses.
Action Steps
Here are two things you can think about right now:
#1: What’s unique about you?
Get really clear on what we call your “experience factors”.
I want you to think about these things:
What are your talents, those really kind of quirky things that you’re naturally really good at? What kind of skills do you have that you built and roles that you played?
What do you really love to do?
What is your passion?
This is what’s going to make you unique and really have that connection with your audience.
#2 What audience do you want to serve?
Who do you want to serve? You can stand out by narrowing your focus and serving a specific audience.
Think about the the problem that audience has that you can help them solve using your unique experience factors.
Share your thoughts in the comments below. I would love to hear from you.