Ask IH: How do you differentiate your product from your competitors?

Hi @meetzaveri, I have found the first step to finding product differentiation is to write it down. Draft an email that you would send to customers to explain your differentiation, and iterate on that. When you see which differentiation resonates, you will know what to build.

Here is some language that can help you describe your point of differentiation.

1. Use the word "Unlike". For example, "Unlike Apple Music, Spotify has a free tier supported by ads." "Unlike Coursera, which only features courses from universities, Udemy features courses from non-academic experts."

2. Use the word "For". For example, "Lyft is the ride-share platform for passengers who want to have friendly conversation with their drivers." "Beats by Dre are headphones for people who want to look stylish."

3. Sometimes, competitors have too many features and you can differentiate by offering fewer features. Identify what features you don't have. "Unlike Facebook, which has content on lots of topics, Indie Hackers has content for entrepreneurs. This focus lets you discover relevant posts more easily."

@meetzaveri, was this helpful? If so, then check out my website: SplashPad. SplashPad helps you write about your product in ways that attract attention and sell. https://getsplashpad.com.

Wishing you the best!

Also, prior to your product release there are big players who are already dominating in that space.

It is generally not a good idea to enter markets with big players who are dominating that space. Much of what you think you can do to be better than them is not what people really care about.

For example Whatsapp has over 5 BILLION downloads on the Play Store. It dominates messaging. It also can't send audio files larger than 16MB. If you make a messaging app that can do that, you will still lose because most people care about the fact that everyone has Whatsapp which makes it easy to communicate with anyone anywhere. The global network effects of Whatsapp is the primary feature and it is really hard to beat so if you do better than Whatsapp in all other areas except that one you will lose.

So how do I differentiate my product from competitors? Mostly by not trying to compete with them at all! So in the audio example above, I wouldn't make a messaging app that can send audio files larger than 16MB then proceed to say how I am better than Whatsapp. I would just target the small niche of people who send large audio files and market that as non-messaging app so they don't EVER think of using Whatsapp as a free alternative when they have smaller files ;-)

You can try to pick a niche. Like a specific group of customers and build better tools suited for them. Or make a cheaper, less feature rich variant (what choice do you anyways have) if the other options are very expensive.