Your competitors are actually HELPING you

In the world of business, the mantra of ignoring competitors and focusing solely on your product is outdated and, well, let's call it what it is—dumb. In the age of social media, customers are no longer blissfully unaware of alternatives. They can find a new product in seconds with a quick search on any platform.

So… how do you get people to buy YOUR product?

Unfortunately, simply building the best product doesn’t work anymore. Unless you have patentable, hard science breakthroughs or regulatory protection, competitors can ethically steal anything they want.

Yeah, standing out is f*cking hard.

My SaaS startup has 3 HUGE competitors, all offering a very similar product.

I assumed it’d be impossible to compete for customers. I thought our CPA would have to be extortionate and churn would be out of control.

But that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Our competitors actually HELP us ❤️

Firstly, the market is so large and unsaturated that our competitors are only capturing a portion of the total market, leaving a huge untapped audience.

Realization 1: our competitors aren’t stealing all our customers.

Secondly, our competitors are actually raising our target audience’s awareness levels by running ads. They’re giving “study help” apps more exposure and showing our target audience there’s a solution to their problem.

Realization 2: our competitors are doing the heavy lifting for us.

Lastly (and most importantly), analyzing our competitors has been the #1 driver of growth in our biz.

It’s the quickest way to find out what works (and what doesn’t).

We’ve broken down EVERYTHING our competitors have done.

Product features. Marketing strategies. Pricing model. Onboarding flows.

You name it, we analyze it. Then we use these 3 questions to help us improve our own brand:

1. What’s clearly performing well for them, and why?

2. What could they improve, and why?

3. How quickly/easily can we implement this?

Realization 3: we can steal what works, and improve on their weak points.

We wouldn’t have scaled our SaaS to $25k+ MRR without strong competitors we could analyze and learn from.

And you should treat your competitors in exactly the same way. Use them as a baseline, not a demotivator.

And that’s a wrap! Thanks for reading.

If you want a longer & more in-depth version of this, check out the Competitor Research and Strategy Playbook by Patrick Campbell. Super insightful read.

If you have any questions/topics you’d like me to cover in future, just reply to this email or DM me on Twitter.

Catch you next week 👋

Ryan, The SaaS Guy

Making SaaS less of a pain in the aaS, one step at a time.