How best to stand out in an increasingly saturated market? (I will not promote)
Back in March I entered the world of local, on-device meeting transcription apps. I can see your eyes rolling already, but we were actually fairly early in this space, at least in terms of offering a comparative-or-better feature set with some of the big…
Back in March I entered the world of local, on-device meeting transcription apps. I can see your eyes rolling already, but we were actually fairly early in this space, at least in terms of offering a comparative-or-better feature set with some of the big incumbents in this space (who are mostly cloud-based). The biggest hurdle we face today is grabbing people's attention long enough to *explain* all the things which set us apart. Reactions usually fall into one of two camps: "Wow, this is awesome!" - then they covert, or "Oh, so it's like [competitor] but [some axis we usually compare unfavourably on]?" For everyone in that second camp, I'd love to respond along the lines of "well, ackchyually [list of a hundred ways I believe we're better]", but I feel like the moment's probably already gone at that point. Consumer fatigue in this space is real, but there is a HUGE range in the quality of applications too - a chasm stands between the good and the increasing number of sloppily-put-together bad. Short of adding more and more (and deeper) comparison pages on our site to point people at, I'm not quite sure how to turn an initial negative reaction into a positive outcome. I hand on heart believe that we ARE better (I've tested almost every app in the space) in most ways that matter, and I'm honest about where we're not (which is still a lot of places). Interested to know how others have tackled this, or stood out more clearly in the first place such that they head the question off before it's even been answered.
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The issue isn't attention, it's your pitch. If you need time to explain what makes you different, you don't have a position yet, you have a feature list. Pick the one use case where on-device is undeniably better and sell only that. For transcription that's privacy: legal and medical meetings that can never touch a cloud server. One sentence people instantly get beats a ten minute demo.
exactly, the 'dumb at first' phase is where most people quit that's your moat. if everyone already understood the solution, you wouldn't be special. keep digging until the dumb idea becomes the obvious one, that's where the real money lives.
Honestly, building in public is a great way to deal with this because then people see you and start to trust you. Thus, they automatically are more likely to convert. I also took the liberty to check out your product and I’d say linkedin is a great place for you to build a following and generate leads. So if I had to build in public from scratch on LinkedIn, these are the exact steps I’d follow: Decide the ideal customer profile (people who will buy your product) and ideal follower profile (people who will follow you) Share posts about personal lessons, growth stories and product updates. Engage with your ICP and IFP regularly. To take a step further, start outreaching to some potential leads and offer a free trial to them. This will help you generate leads and followers on LinkedIn. I hope this helps. A.
If someone had a clear way to take any business and perfectly market it, they would be a billionaire and marketing would be a solved problem.
I also have some products that I work with in a highly competitive space. As nerdy and cliche as it might sound we try to pivot to a various degree into something contrarian and solve the problem in a way nobody is thinking about using first principles. Typically where we end up sounds dumb at first but if you keep working with customers sometimes you find it. Easier said than done.
if they're already comparing you to the big guys, stop explaining why you're better and start showing what they can't do. don't fight the 'it's like X but Y' embrace it. be the 'rebel' option that's more honest about its flaws than the bloated cloud giants. people don't want perfect, they want something that actually works.
The trap with your second camp is you're letting them frame the comparison on the incumbent's axis: "like X but worse at Y" only stings if Y actually matters, and by defending Y you're agreeing that it does. Try flipping it: "yeah we skip Y on purpose, here's what we do instead." half the time nobody actually used Y, they just saw it on a comparison page.
Pick a niche that you are getting traction in and double down on that. If your best customers are, say, auto dealerships (a $2trn industry) then become the leading "meeting transcription for auto dealerships". Don't go too narrow (eg. Used Audi dealerships in Iowa) but don't be afraid of focusing. The book Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind is a classic in this area. Create a category and dominate it, don't compete in an existing one. It's hard to say no to everything but if "you're everything to everybody you are nothing to no-one". And you can always expand if you truly run out of customers in one category. In my own company, the more specific our niche has become, the easier it is to sell and the less concern there is about cost. We definitely struggled to choose to focus, but when we did it has paid off well.
Who are your customers/potential customers and how long are their software procurement projects? When I was in corporate, it would be a 1-3 year process to bring in a new software vendor, including an initial request for funds. If companies came to me to advertise their new tool and I was short with them, it would be because no matter how good your product is, there would be so many hurdles we’d have to jump through to even ask for money/resources to even ENTERTAIN the thought of using your product. We would basically only go out and seek vendors ourselves when we have money allocated for the project.
I'd recommend focusing on the single most important feature that makes you 2-5x better, and lead with that. The goal isn't to shotgun every reason why you're better, you hook them and then sequentially lead them through an experience.
One thing I've learned is that markets rarely reward the product with the most features. They reward the product that's easiest to understand. If someone needs a ten-minute explanation before they see the value, you've probably got a positioning problem more than a product problem. Clear positioning often beats a longer feature list.
You’re trying to scale before you’ve even sincerely validated your PMF and ICP. You need to burn more money nailing that down before you keep burning money on sales hours and marketing spin.
I hand on heart believe that we ARE better I don't need better, I need it to work. Let the meaning of that really sink in. Like really consider what it means, because that's how most people think. People building something new, especially if it's early on in their entrepreneurial/founder career, thinks that things setting them apart and being "better" is how they'll break the market in their favor. But, that only works if all of the competition is experienced by all the users to not even reach a base level of good enough to use. The marketing/slogan/pitch/whatever that would catch my attention when looking for something would be "it just works". I don't need an extended lecture and YouTube presentations and long lists of reasons and features and testimonials and guides and faqs and fancy graphics and comparisons with the competition and all those other things. I need to be told that it works, and I need the name to be trusted. And that's where you start to see your real challenge and why it's so hard to break into a market. I literally said that I don't want to give you any time to explain why you're better, because I don't even care about "better" (as long as it works); but I also said that I need to trust your name. So what I said is that I need to trust you, but I also won't give you any time. So where does this leave you, and what does this mean for your investment into building something better on a saturated market?
I’ve been experimenting with different marketing strategies lately, and honestly I’ve found that understanding the audience first makes a huge difference. What’s been working best for you guys?
Interview a few people who converted and a few who dismissed you as another recorder. Ask what was happening in the meeting and what they were replacing. Then ask which proof changed their mind. Use the repeated answer as the first-screen promise. If privacy keeps coming up, show exactly where the audio and transcript are stored. Keep the full comparison for buyers who reach evaluation.