Ask HN: How to compete against bigger competitor? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to compete against bigger competitor?

5 pointsfiremelt5 comments

I'm courious how, especially against competitor that already on market long before you lets say like >5 years.

It just like yelp that can compete against google in the user reviews and recommendation website

I mean google have android and google maps and they are bigger company than yelp.

Another story maybe lyft vs uber.

(For now I just have an idea about something but the big guy already on the market)

If anyone have a good resource to learn more about it, I would be glad to know it thank you

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The business I'm working in (SEO tracking, Google rank tracking) is incredibly saturated and there are a couple of big players (Moz, Ahrefs, Majestic,...) around which are the industry standard. They get the large piece, obviously. But that doesn't mean us small fish can't get a share as well. You just have to develop one or more unique selling propositions, or try doing something better.

For example, we made our product stand out by using a completely different design and branding. Big players use the usual corporate white theme, while we went for a black themed app with aggressive logos. Others are server side rendered apps, while we serve a single page app that's feels much snappier. We polished the UX. Even though the competition (the big players) have many more features and much richer datasets, we started observing some people jump ship - from their to ours. Simply because our interface makes people really enjoy using the app and it ticks with them (if you want to check us out: https://nightwatch.io/).

There's a classic marketing book written a few decades ago called Positioning that is about just this topic.

https://www.amazon.com/Positioning-Battle-Your-Al-Ries/dp/00...

It's a short read and well worth the time. I wish I'd read it before I'd built one of my products. If I had I wouldn't have wasted the development time.

The core message is that you shouldn't compete against an established market leader head on. It outlines a number of different approaches you can take.

Depending on the market but I would say innovate. Example I love to use is MySpace and Facebook, when FB came in they had a better way to do same thing and killed it.

Innovation could be anything in my small business that is in retail I automate as many work as I can to ensure I am efficient and my employees do only most important work instead of routine. That way I gained competitive advantage in many areas.

One possibility is to specialize to a smaller market or to a smaller function. If the big company is making a generalized CRM, make a CRM specifically designed for accountants or tutors or talent agents. You'll be able to tailor your messaging, design, and marketing to a level that the big company simply cannot follow. Your smaller size can be one of your greatest assets.

Google, Yelp, Lyft, and Uber all benefit from network effects. Many businesses do not. E.g. if you're selling books, the fact 200 other people bought the book doesn't make the book more useful to purchaser 201.

If you don't care about network effects, why is competition a problem?

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