Ever heard of the Blue Ocean Strategi? It’s a business strategy that’s described in a book by the same name from 2005 and it suggests that
an organization should create new demand in an uncontested market space, or a “Blue Ocean”, rather than compete head-to-head with other suppliers in an existing industry
source: Wikipedia
When it came out it was the new black in business and it currently has a four star rating on Amazon. But is this the “Perfect Business Idea/Strategy”? I think not… read on…
(for the record, I agree with this guy's review)
So why am I bringing this up?
One of the most frequent questions I get is how to "get that perfect idea that no one has ever thought of.”
Now if you've read my free ebook you probably know my opinion on "getting perfect ideas.”
They don't exist! In a rather old video I ranted about good ideas vs. bad ideas because in my world there are only ideas.
Too many people get so fixated on getting the right idea for a product or service that they quit (or at least stall forever) before they've even started. Guess what: Building a business or product takes time and effort and if you already quite before even starting, my prediction is that you won't ever achieve success with your own business.
If you're a solopreneur or just starting out in your own venture, the Blue Ocean Strategy sucks BIG TIME.
You don't want to "create new demand”!
Do you know how hard it is change people's habits? This is essentially what's in the "create new demand”
This would require a marketing effort and money to do so that no small business owner can do alone. It would require a team of people and money to spend on SuperBowl scaled advertising.
So while it may sound like the method of an evil genius to just "create new demand” you don't want to create a new market for yourself. No instead what you want to do is: copy what's working and improve it.
You want to position yourself in customer streams where money is already being spent, not trying to persuade people to spend money on something that they didn't spend money on before.
When you build your product or service you want to take some existing idea that is already making money and see if you can improve it slightly. Perhaps bring it to a new market segment, perhaps you can create a more professional online presence or perhaps you can simply negotiate a better deal with the suppliers because your best friend is sleeping with their CEO. Who knows…
Dan and Ian over at the Lifestyle Business Podcast also dedicated a whole podcast to their take on this method that they call Rip, Pivot and Jam. They are crazy guys and I strongly urge you to listen to their awesome podcast.
Why having more than 300 competitors is a good thing
Someone who's really good at this method is in fact a Danish internet entrepreneur (and kick ass guy) called Martin Thorborg. Most of my Danish readers will know him but if you don't live in Denmark chances are that you haven't heard about him before.
Back in the early Internet days he started a site called Jubii, it was basically a local clone of Yahoo that was dominating the search/portal market at the time (Jubii is the Danish word for Yahoo 
). A perfect example of taking something that's working in one market and bringing it to a new one.
Martin has a Danish podcast and in one of the episodes he argues why competitors are a good thing (in Danish).
When he helped start the company SPAMFighter they had more than 300 competitors! How's that for a crowded market? Heck they even had Microsoft as a competitor!
What they did do was to
- target the non-techies in the market and
- localized/translating the application to a crazy number of languages bringing it to markets that normally would have trouble with English only applications.
Hooking into customer streams
So what can you do to create a business that hooks into an existing customer stream?
1. Start with the market not the product
Instead of focusing on developing a product, you should start out with selecting your existing market. You could optionally start out with selecting the product you want to "clone” and then focusing on the existing market that product has and how you can tune it.
2. Design the product to the market
I know a lot of entrepreneurs are pushing the message that you should develop something "scratching your own itch“. In my book that's a lousy way to do business. You are not the one who's gonna buy your own products are you? Are you happy designing your business with only one guaranteed customer?
Don't get me wrong by the way, I hold a high degree of respect for 37Signals (the guys I linked to above). So much that I at one point had a company called 41Concepts (with the name partly being a tribute to them). But I don't recommend that you follow their advice in this situation.
Ask your potential market what they want in a product, try to see what kind of questions your potential market asks and build all of that into a product!
3. Identify ambassadors and passionate leaders
Because there is an existing market, there are most likely people discussing products and services in that market. You need to identify them and reach out once you have a minimum viable product and have them test it.
They can both help you sell the product by reviewing it online but they can also give you valuable feedback on the actual product that you can use to improve it.
So unless you're in a market like toilet paper that no one really cares about… no wait…. I stand corrected, even in the toilet paper market someone is testing and reviewing .
4. Launch your product where your customers are
If your potential customers hang out in forums, facebook groups, physical events or what have you, doesn't really matter. The only thing that matters is that you are where they are.
So instead of mindlessly buying AdWords or similar standard marketing strategy, spend a little time getting to know the whereabouts of your customers. If you can establish yourself as a leader in the space of your customer chances are that you have a very viable business. Even with no original idea, a ton of competitors and no money to spend on marketing.
Kicking ass is underrated
So summing up here…
Taking a product or market that hasn't evolved much in a couple of years and bringing "kicking ass” to the table is really a fantastic business idea.
You take something that is already making money and has proved it's worth and then spend your energy on differentiating yourself from competitors that might have had a cash cow for the last couple of years and have really been lulled into comfort by their current market position.
What's your take on this? Do you have any other good examples or do you think I'm hopelessly wrong here? Got a method for identifying perfect business ideas? Let me know in the comments 
The post The Perfect Business Idea is Hooking into Existing Customer Streams appeared first on Retire My Ass.
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