How Adopting a Growth Mindset Enables You To Compete With Amazon
You will not dethrone the online retailer but can certainly snatch up marketshare right under their noses.
Amazon is an “online bookstore” that started in 1994, and now pretty much runs the internet with a market cap of almost $500 billion.
In the past few months, we have seen how companies either crash or soar based on Amazon’s activity in the market. Business Insider seems to be on top of those reports: Blue Apron got “Amazon’d” before it even became a public company. On the contrary, Nike’s stock was up 2% after announcing it would be selling directly through Amazon.
The market seems to look at the online retailer’s dominance as a: “you’re either with us or against us.” So that leaves entrepreneurs a crucial question: Can you still compete against Amazon?
The answer, is yes. You can do it by adopting a Silicon Valley Growth Mindset.
Don’t believe me?
Take one of the faces of Entrepreneurship, Gary Vaynerchuk, and his words as proof that it can be accomplished.
“The number one rule I have about startups and entrepreneurs is when David is fighting Goliath, you never fight Goliath’s game. Creating a business that is vulnerable to the Google infrastructure, or any other company for that matter whether it’s Amazon or Apple or Facebook. It’s just not smart. So what you need to do is find small niches that either you can move so quickly in, that by the time they decide to attack it, they’re better to acquire you or that you’ve amassed so much market share that you’ll be able to sustain the blow of that competition and that whatever you’re left with once they enter will still be meaningful… Its speed. Only speed trumps somebody bigger than the giant. Play your niches and go extremely fast, or else you’ve got no shot.” — Gary Vaynerchuk
Key take away: niches & speed.
The Riches Are In The Niches:
Why are niches so important? Well, let’s go back to initial paragraph:
Amazon is an “online bookstore” that started in 1994.
Amazon only focused on books at the beginning. Now, they dominate online retail.
Adopting The Growth Mindset:
- Focus on a niche.
Curating your niche lets you address your customers true underlying needs and really understand their pain points. That is called customer development. It’s the most lean and agile way to start a business. Go out and talk to your customers, if you have a new company. Search for analogues for your product or service and ask their customers what caused them to switch from one company to another.
And that, is what Amazon cannot do. Their greatest strength (having everything) is inconsistently one of their biggest weaknesses: they just can’t focus on individualized development that much.
What you have to remember is that people do not want products sold to them. They want a better future version of themselves. Understand exactly what it is your customers want to accomplish by hiring your product or service, and market that idea. Don’t focus on features. Put all your marketing efforts on developing the better version of your customers’ selves.
You can read more about Jobs To Be Done here
2. Have a growth framework.
First things first: growth is not a tactic, it’s a process.
Unfortunately, growth does not come from that one killer campaign or that feature you added to your app. Growth is a mindset that you need to adopt and implement in your day-to-day actions. It’s the sum of many experiments. Hypotheses that have gone bad lead to those good ideas. It’s constant: measuring, analyzing, optimizing and repeating.
Second, always remember: what works for others may not work for you.
Just because Amazon runs pay-per-click doesn’t mean you should too. You’ll never be able to outbid them. If another player is running Facebook Ads, it doesn’t mean you should. That’s simply what worked for their business.
Lastly, and maybe most important: Take advantage of the accelerated rate of change in the market. Try new things, and try them out quickly!
New platforms are popping up very quickly and the market is reacting just as fast Big companies are not usually adapting at this speed. Look for the underpriced attention pipelines, i.e: up and coming platforms.
Facebook Ads used to be super cheap. But now big companies have caught up and have started to pour in millions of dollars into their ad spend. Look for cheap, novel attention channels.
3. Experiment quickly.
There is a proven model that any startup can apply to their day to day marketing operations: Gabriel Weinberg & Justin Mares’ Bullseye Framework.
This framework basically walks startups through how they can generate traction in their market. It’s all about reaching who you need, and doing what you have to do.
- Brainstorm all the tactics that might work for you (he says there are 19 channels, but maybe you can come up with more. Let me know if you do.)
- Prioritize what will possibly work.
- Build tests around your top 3 viable priorities and implement them.
- Measure those test; which one worked best?
- Go all in on what worked best — give it all your focus.
- Repeat once you have extracted all value from that channel (remember we are in an accelerated market).
The Bullseye framework let’s you focus in on that one channel that’s killing it for you at the moment and allows you to grow your startup.
Hand in Hand To Your Customers Better Self:
So it’s time to start scaling your business. You have customers, and a growth framework that lets you find new, underpriced channels that are perfectly tailored for your startup.
The key at this stage, is to evolve with your customers to help them solve their jobs (people don’t buy products, they hire them to do a job). You are responsible for taking them to that new awesome self they want, measure their progress, let them know you care.
At this point, Amazon is a commodity and commodities get trade based on prices. There is no way they can treat all their clients like you are treating yours.
Don’t let your clients define the success they become, you only commoditize yourself. Always keep that better future self in mind and lead them up to that point.
How do you keep growing?
As the CEO of a startup you are overwhelmed. You are doing a bit of everything. Can you really handle more growth to compete against this juggernaut?
Yes, you absolutely can!
This is where the growth mindset comes back into play.
It’s now time to run your business, and not let it run you. You already have the foundations of the growth framework, now it’s time to build a growth machine.
Brian Balfour made Hubspot a growth machine through a very similar approach as The Bullseye Framework. Expect his approach is more applicable to scaled companies.
- Have a business objective
- Brainstorm on ways you can reach that objective
- Prioritize those ideas based on time and available resources.
- Build a test
- Run the test
- Measure: Did it work? Most importantly, why did it work?
- Systemize those test and build a playbook.
Fairly simple right? It looks very similar to what you were previously doing except now you systemize those experiments so that they can run automatically and you build a playbook that you can hand-off to your new VP of Marketing or Head of Growth so they can quickly understand your guidelines and implement processes easily. Hence, the business no longer runs you.
Your advantage against Amazon
Having to compete against Amazon should never have to be a bad thing, it’s actually something beneficial and it’s to your advantage.
Develop that growth mindset and culture, it will pay-off in the long run. Never leave your client’s side your customers and always remember that you are not selling a product or service, but a better future of your customer.
It’s time to get out there and start growing! Growth is not a one time thing, it’s a mindset.
Tell me about your journey! What growth processes are you currently implementing? What will you start implementing?
Feel free to reach out on LinkedIn or email: tmaremaa@tradecrafted.com
