- What do pocket microscopes,
infrared thermometers
and selfie ring lights have in common?
Well, not too much,
but today those are gonna
be our example products,
and we are going over differentiation.
What's happening guys?
My name's Dan Rodgers, and today
I'm excited to go over three different
differentiation strategies with you.
And we're gonna go through those
using three different product examples.
Real-life product examples.
So you can follow along,
you can look at the
examples we go through,
and apply it to the
product you are busy with.
And a brief intro to these
strategies, number one,
is to solve and unsolve problem.
Number two is to offer a
superior and new-to-Amazon
version of that product.
And number three is to improve
that product via bundling.
And just to show that this does work,
I wanted to interrupt just
quick with this screenshot here.
This is one of the Just One Dime members.
I worked quite closely with this member,
and these were his sales
numbers in his very first month.
And in my opinion, I
attribute most of that
to him building his product differently.
He looked very much at the market,
what customers favored most,
and he built the best bundle for them.
And that's what lead to
his first month's sales
looking like this.
Now, if you guys wanna know
more about Just One Dime
check the link below.
We have 90 minutes of free
training for you there.
So those are the three ways
that you can differentiate a product,
but there are two things you wanna look at
when you start this process.
So you have your product,
how do you go about
differentiating that product?
Here are two things you wanna do.
You wanna go to Amazon,
type in your product's main key word,
and then you're gonna
look for these two things
on those results pages.
Number one is what customers favor.
So you're looking what are
customers buying the most,
what are they most interested in and why.
It could be specific
colors of that product,
and that could help you
determine which color you sell.
It could be certain
styles of that product.
For example, in one of our examples today,
the more modern and
minimalist type products
sell better than the others.
So it's that type of
thing you're looking for.
What do customers favor here?
And you wanna place yourself
along that trajectory.
And second here, which you're
probably more familiar with,
is review research.
What do customers say in reviews?
You're looking at pretty
much all star ratings,
but in particular you
really wanna look strongly
at your three and four star reviews,
which are usually quite balanced reviews.
They're saying the
product is good, but this,
and that's your cue to
come in and then improve
based on that, "But this."
So it could be, "I love the product,
"but I wish it didn't have
this sharp edge," for example,
and that's what you fix.
Or, "I love the product,
but I wish it came
"with better packaging, because
I'm meant to package this
"in between uses," et cetera.
You're fixing that thing that
customers are mentioning most.
So through these two
questions, we can ensure
we're aligned with what
customers want most here.
In terms of what are they favoring most?
Colors, styles, specific versions,
we're along that trajectory,
but also we're taking it a step further
and we're improving that
style or color of product
based on what customers
have said in their feedback.
So these are two really important things
you do wanna look for in your market.
So let's jump into our product examples.
And example number one
is a selfie ring light
as you can see over here.
Now of course, this
device is meant to help
people record themself,
take images of themself
and provide good lighting for that.
Some people also like the effect
that this light gives them.
It actually creates a little
ring around their iris.
If you ever seen videos like that.
But others generally
just want good lighting
for pictures and videos.
And then you can see it also provides
a little mounting point for your phone,
if you're using phone camera.
Sometimes even a mounting point
for a proper professional camera.
So starting off with our first test,
we're gonna go look at the results pages.
What's happening here?
How many of the offerings look the same?
Which ones are customers favoring?
And when we looked at the results here,
a lot of these look the same.
They all have this type of style,
they all have this more
flimsy aluminum stand.
They all have the same
type of tripod legs.
There's a lot of similarity here.
And when you see a lot of
similarity in your market,
that is a good sign.
That's an opportunity
for you to go in there
and break that mold.
It gives you an opportunity
to really stand out.
In terms of what customers are favoring,
we do see customers favoring
the ones which look bigger.
So if it looks that that
ring light's bigger,
that's what they're favoring.
And this tells us we definitely wanna go
with a bigger ring light.
So the next step is we're gonna do
some review research on this product.
Now, the biggest gripes or complaints,
or things people want
changed were the following.
Number one, the ring light's too small.
So we found that it looks
really big in the image,
but when customers receive it,
it's much smaller than they thought.
It doesn't provide enough lighting.
It doesn't allow them to
get the effect they want.
So basically they're saying
it feels a bit like false advertising.
We're not getting exactly
what it looks like.
So that's very important that we deliver.
That we meet or exceed
customers' expectations
with a bigger ring light.
Second here was flimsy base,
and I know exactly what they mean.
I actually have one of these tripods here,
these aluminum tripods, and
they are very lightweight.
They can move very easily,
which is a problem if you're recording.
You don't want a lot
of movement, et cetera.
And of course, it could topple over
or get knocked over quite easily as well.
So from this one, we wanna
go with a much sturdier base.
This is also a visual
improvement we can make.
It's something, when we
look at that results page,
all those similar tripod
legs, ours could be different.
And that's gonna be something
that jumps out on the results.
Third here was no desk mounting option.
So again we can somehow work our base
to be both less flimsy,
and look different,
but also be desk-mountable, hopefully.
So that's something we're gonna aim for.
Fourth here was inadequate phone
or camera mounting systems.
These mounting systems were a bit flimsy,
they didn't hold things in place.
Some of them only had
the phone camera mount,
not also a professional camera mount.
So these are things we'll work in as well.
So on this first product our strategy
is going to be to fix a problem.
In this case, it's actually
to fix a group of problems
that other sellers are not solving yet.
So we went over to alibaba.com,
looked through a ton of results,
and we ended up finding this one.
And we chose this one because it addresses
the ring light size issue.
Most of those getting complaints
were an eight inch ring light.
Here we went with a 12 inch ring light.
So that's gonna overcome
a lot of those problems.
It addresses the flimsy
base issue, as you can see.
This one has a really
heavy and sturdy base.
And on top of that, of course,
this is gonna be desk-mountable,
something they can actually
put on the desk very easily.
It's not gonna wobble or move about much.
This one also provides the option for both
a phone mount or a
professional camera mount.
So we're increasing
our market share there.
Both types of users can use our product.
And on top of that, very importantly,
this product looks significantly different
to what's on our results
pages for this key word.
That's gonna help us really stand out.
It could help us charge a premium
for this product as well.
This specific unit is not
the Amazon platform yet.
And of course, we would customize
this with our brand name,
customize packaging, et cetera.
And so that explains fixing a problem
others are not fixing yet.
Moving onto example number two,
this is the pocket microscope.
And of course, that's a
little portable device,
and it allows customers to magnify objects
to a microscopic level.
Now, when we look at the
results pages for this,
if we look at what customers favor,
what's going on in this market,
the first thing we see is that there's two
main versions of this product.
The first is this one,
which is a plug into your phone version.
So it's kind of on a base
which you put on a desk,
and then it plugs into a phone
and works via an app.
So your phone can present the image
that the microscope is taking.
The second type we see is
this little handheld version.
Now, these sometimes have a little clip
where you can put your phone onto them.
But they can also work
just simply being handheld
and looking through them.
But again, although we
have those two versions,
they all look similar.
So we have a group that look
very much like this one,
and we have a group that
look very much like this one.
There's not too much
variation outside of that.
What we also notice here, though,
is that people are willing to pay
quite a lot for these devices.
Even these base versions are
going for a high price tag.
So this shows us, perhaps,
a path to premium.
So these are all the
things you're looking at
when you look at what do customers favor,
what does your market look like?
Step one.
Step two, let's jump into
some review research.
We found the biggest complaints or gripes
to be the following.
One is that it's difficult to retain focus
and keep steady.
Of course, if it's moving,
kind of similar to the
previous product we looked at.
If it's moving, the image
is not gonna be clear.
We're not gonna be able to magnify
and keep focus on that object.
Secondly here, the phone clip
does not support the phone.
This was specific to the handheld version
where the clip was just not strong enough
to really support the phone.
So we found that system is inferior,
it's not a great one to
follow with our own product.
So our strategy on this one is going to be
to offer a superior new-to-Amazon
version of this product.
We're gonna look to premium here.
We can see people accept higher price.
They're willing to pay more
for a higher quality product.
So that's what we're gonna aim to do here
with a brand new unit.
Something not on the platform at all yet.
So we jumped over to Alibaba,
and eventually we came down
to this version over here.
And we chose this one, because number one,
you can see it has this built-in display.
So there's no need for
some flimsy phone clip
or plugging into your phone with some app
that's really difficult to use.
This has it built in,
so it's gonna be easy.
It's gonna be a better user experience.
Secondly on this one, is
that this makes it visually
very different to what we
see on those results pages.
That's gonna lead to more clicks,
and more conversion for us.
It's gonna generate a lot of interest.
Thirdly, it just looks premium.
This is something you can charge more for
because it includes the screen with it.
Second on this, it has an attachable base.
So although you can handheld
it, it also has the base,
and so you have both options.
Thirdly, this is a higher
quality microscope.
So the cost to us is going to be higher,
but it's going to render a better image,
and we see a path to premium.
So we can charge more,
and then it makes sense.
And fourth, we kinda covered this,
but it looks entirely different
to what's already there,
and that's extremely important.
Whatever product you are
looking at now, aim to do that.
It must look different to
what's already on the market.
So that was introducing a superior,
new-to-Amazon version of a product.
Let's move on to example three.
This is our infrared thermometer.
Of course, that's for measuring
someone's temperature.
This is seeing a lot
of uptick, apparently.
If you go to the doctor,
dentist, et cetera,
they always have to take your temperature.
So this is seeing more
attention currently,
and that could make it a good niche
to gain a position in.
Now, if we do our first
test here, on results pages
we see extreme similarity.
In fact, this is the most similar
of any of our markets today
that we're looking at.
A lot of the traditional handheld versions
just with slight variations in color.
Again in this one, we
see a path to premium.
There's a lot of offerings
charging a very price
even for basic versions.
And then we're seeing newer versions,
like these contactless,
wall-mountable versions,
also going for a premium.
And what we see from a style perspective,
what customers favor, it's
definitely the more minimal
or modern products like this one.
That's what they seem
to be buying most of.
And then secondly, we
jumped into review research.
And on this one, the
biggest complaints or gripes
were number one, that it
has inaccurate measurements.
That you can measure yourself
now and in 10 minutes,
and there's quite a bit of variation.
So this is something customers
mentioned again and again,
is that can I trust this?
Because it seems to have
a lot of variation in it.
And secondly, much more interestingly,
is people complained
about no storage solution.
They said that the
instructions of these products
said that they should store it safely.
Yet, the product doesn't come
with that storage solution.
I find this to be a huge deal,
because this is something
we can easily do,
it's something no other
sellers are currently doing.
And it would be very visual
to provide some type of storage solution,
like a case, or EVA case, et cetera.
So on this one, we
actually have two options.
We have two strategies we can use.
The first one is to offer a
unique bundle to the customer.
In this way, we go with
the more traditional,
handheld version.
We would go with a minimal one,
but then we would provide
the storage solution
that people are asking
for via an EVA case.
Or what we could do is
go with a new version
not on the platform yet.
And if we did the new version,
we would go with a contactless,
wall-mountable type of product here.
We'd go with a minimal,
contactless version,
and introduce a new unit to the platform
to take a position in this emerging niche,
this contactless infrared thermometer.
So if we focus on the bundle option,
option one for this product,
we would go with this option here.
Number one, because it has
a lot of certification.
This is a higher-cost option to us,
but it's something that's going
to present accurate measurements,
and that's something we
want if we want longevity,
if we want sustainable sales.
We don't want those negative reviews
talking about inaccurate measurements.
So that's reason one for this unit.
Reason two here is that it
has a minimal aesthetic.
This is something customers are favoring.
We definitely wanna place
ourselves along that trend.
Three, we can really easily
design a case for this product.
And four, importantly,
this unit's also not on the platform yet.
So we'd be the first to
offer this specific one.
Now, if we went with the
new version approach,
we would go with this one here.
Because number one, it is the contactless,
wall-mountable option.
And that is a brand new little
niche emerging on Amazon.
So we've got all these
handheld infrared thermometers,
but we don't see a lot
of contactless ones.
We've got three or four
between page one and two,
so it's just emerging,
obviously because of
the current situation.
And of course, that gives us benefits
in terms of lower competition,
the ability to charge more.
Our market will be
smaller, because remember,
you wouldn't have this in your home.
This is something a dentist or doctor
would have in their practice.
So our market is smaller,
but it's still a big market.
And if supermarkets, et cetera,
start to take up this trend,
something like this could be
a very good niche to be in.
The second reason we chose this one
is it has a minimal and modern aesthetic.
And thirdly, this exact unit itself
is not on the platform yet.
It also looks very different
even to the current
contactless ones on the Amazon market.
So we'd be the first with this one,
it's gonna look visually different,
and that's gonna drive
more clicks and conversion.
So now that you've seen the three
differentiation strategies,
here's a question for you.
Which one are you gonna be following?
Is it either a solution
to a problem, a bundle,
or a new-to-Amazon version?
Please leave a comment below,
we'd love to hear from you.
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I hope you guys are making
some awesome progress,
and I will see you in the next video.
(gentle music)
