competitive analysis – Page 10

Can Your Firm Use Bredemarket’s Analysis Work?

(Part of the biometric product marketing expert series)

Is your firm asking the following questions?

Who are the competitors in the market for my product?
Which features do competitive products offer? How do they compare to the features my product offers?
Which industries do competitors target? How do they compare with the industries my company targets?
Which contracts have the competitors won? How do they compare with the contracts my company has won?
How effective is my company’s product marketing? My website? My social media? My key employees’ social media?

Bredemarket can help you answer these questions.

Types of analyses Bredemarket performs

For those who don’t know, or who missed my previous discussion on the topic, Bredemarket performs analyses that contain one or more of the following:

Analysis of one or more markets/industries for a particular product or product line.
Analysis of one or more (perhaps tens or hundreds) of competitors and/or competitive products for a particular product or product line.
Analysis of a firm’s own product or product line, including how it is marketed.

How Bredemarket conducts its analyses

Bredemarket analyses only use publicly available data.

I’m not hacking websites to get competitor prices or plans.
I’m not asking past employees to violate their non-disclosure agreements.

How Bredemarket packages its analyses

These analyses can range in size from very small to very large. On the very small side, I briefly analyzed the markets of three prospect firms in advance of calls with them. On the large side, I’ve performed analyses that take between one and six weeks to complete.

For the small self-analyses (excluding the very small quick freebies before a prospect call), I deliver these under my Bredemarket 404 Web/Social Media Checkup banner. When I first offered this service in 2020, I had a complex price calculation mechanism that depended upon the number of pages I had to analyze. Now I’ve simplified it and charge one of two flat rates.
Because the larger analyses are of undetermined length, I offer these at an hourly rate under my Bredemarket 4000 Long Writing Service banner. These reports can number 40 pages or more in length, sometimes accompanied by a workbook describing 700 or more competitor products or contracts.

Obviously I can’t provide specifics upon the analyses I’ve already performed since those are confidential to my customers, but I always discuss the customers’ needs before launching the analysis to ensure that the final product is what you want. I also provide drafts along the way in case we need to perform a course correction.

Do you need a market, competitor, or self analysis? Contact me. Or book a meeting with me at calendly.com/bredemarket to talk about your needs (and check the “Market/competitor analysis” check box).

Identity/Biometric Firms: Does Anyone Know Who You Are?

Identity/biometric firms: does anyone know who you are?

Who can help your firm create content?

Who knows identity/biometrics:

Biometric modalities?

Verification and authentication factors?

Who can provide content:

Blog posts?

Case studies?

White papers?

Social media?

Market and competitive analyses?

I know who can help.

Contact Bredemarket: https://bredemarket.com/contact/

Bredemarket Identity Firm Services, July 2024.

Divide and Conquer When Providing Deliverables to Clients

(Delivery van image by Unisouth at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3897499)

All of my Bredemarket work involves providing deliverables to clients in some way:

Text for blog posts, case studies, or white papers.
Text for proposals.
Market/competitive analyses.
Other stuff.

By AlexanderVanLoon – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24261584.

For all but one Bredemarket client, I provide my deliverables via email. The deliverables usually consist of items such as Microsoft Word documents, Microsoft Excel workbooks, and Portable Document Files.

Easy to email.

Except in one case.

The work

Not real Bredemarket research and analysis. By Calvinius – Own work : http://www.martingrandjean.ch/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/HumanitesNumeriques.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29275453.

As I mentioned above, Bredemarket often performs market/competitive analyses. In fact, one of my clients likes my analyses so much that they keep on coming back for more analyses to cover different markets.

For the last three analyses for this particular client, my deliverables have consisted of the following:

An overall report, in PDF format.
The raw data, in XLSX format.
Extracts from the raw data, in PDF format.
The raw text of the report, in DOCX format.

Not a real Bredemarket report. By National Highway Traffic Safety Administration – National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Publication Number: NHTSA-DOT-HS-5-01160, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6709383.

In my analyses I referred to the companies’ publicly available websites to gather information on the competitor products, as well as the markets they address. (Using a made-up example, if my client provided its products to convenience stores, and a particular competitor ALSO targeted convenience stores, my client would obviously want to know this.)

The opportunity

But for this third analysis I didn’t just look at the websites. I also looked at the product brochures that I could download from these websites.

Not the tangible collateral I collected for my client. From https://bredemarket.com/2021/07/12/my-prediction-of-the-dea t h-of-tangible-collateral-was-premature/.

This gave me an idea.

Since I was downloading all the publicly available brochures from the various competitors, why not provide all of these brochures to my client?

It seemed like a great idea. Since I had gone through all the work to collect the brochures, might as well let my client make future use of them.

The problem

So as I wrapped up the project and prepared the deliverables for my client, I discovered that I had amassed over 100 megabytes of brochures. (That’s what happens when you analyze over 100 competitor products.)

Not how zip files are compressed. By Only in Oregon – https://www.flickr.com/photos/46052415@N08/38372168986/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=115966874.

So my idea of zipping all the brochures into a single file wouldn’t work. Even the zip file exceeded the attachment sending limits of Bredemarket’s email service provider, Google. (And probably exceeded the attachment receiving limits of my client’s email service provider.)

And if you’ve already figured out the obvious solution to my problem, bear with me. It took me several days to realize the obvious solution myself.

Anyway, I hit upon a great solution to my problem…or so I thought.

The solution, first attempt

But that wasn’t a problem for me. Along with my email account, Google also provides Bredemarket with Google Drive. While the contents of my Google Drive are private to the employees of Bredemarket (all 1 of us), I can designate individual files and folders for access by selected people.

So I set up a designated folder for my client’s access only, uploaded all the deliverables including the 100+ MB zip file to the designated folder, and provided my client’s contact with access.

I then told my client that all the deliverables were in the Google Drive folder and asked the client to let me know when they were downloaded.

Which is when I encountered my second problem.

For security reasons, the client’s IT department forbids employees from accessing unauthorized Google Drives.

So I jumped back to Plan A and emailed all the files to my client except for the one 100+ MB zip file.

Now I just had to get that zip file to the client.

The solution, second attempt

That’s when I recalled the Dropbox account I set up for Bredemarket some time ago.

It was a quick process to upload the single 100+ MB zip file to a designated folder in Dropbox and give my client access.

But the client isn’t allowed to access Dropbox from work either.

The solution, third attempt

By the time that my client was contacting his IT department for a possible fix, I realized the solution that you the reader probably realized several paragraphs ago.

By FranHogan – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=92636750.

Instead of emailing one zip file, why not email multiple zip files in multiple emails, with each zip file under Google’s 25 MB limit?

So I sent six emails to my client.

This FINALLY worked.

I should have divided and conquered in the first place.

Can you use Bredemarket’s deliverables?

Do you want Bredemarket to send you 100 megabytes of brochures, now that I know how to do it?

More importantly, do you want Bredemarket to send you a market/competitor analysis to your specifications?

Talk to Bredemarket and discuss your needs. Book a meeting with me at calendly.com/bredemarket. Be sure to fill out the information form so I can best help you.

Booking a Free 30 Minute Meeting With Bredemarket: Market/Competitor Analysis

If you book a free 30 minute meeting with Bredemarket, you’ll now find an additional option in the “What Type of Content Do You Need?” section: Market/competitor analysis. I’ve done these for years, but never added the option to the form.

My analyses ONLY use publicly available information that is NOT subject to NDA. So you won’t get access to the analyses I’ve performed for other clients, and they won’t get access to the analysis I prepare for you.

While I primarily provide these analyses in the identity/biometrics industry, I’m open to discussing analysis needs in other industries.

Book a meeting to discuss your content needs.

Do As I Say…

I have worked with demand generation and growth marketing leader Gene Volfe, both as employees of the same company and as independent consultants working for other companies.

I asked him to review a short technology piece that I wrote, and he immediately found two gaps:

From https://blog.hubspot.com/customers/3-takeaways-from-start-with-why.

My piece did not explain the “why.”
My piece did not adequately differentiate the product in question from other products.

Hmm…if only there were things that I could read that could help me do these things.

Oh, wait…

Differentiating Your Company and Your Products/Services (April 9, 2024).

Do as I say, and not as I DON’T.

Video: Differentiating Your Company and Your Products/Services

Last week I prepared a presentation for a conference organizer, thinking that I would give the presentation at the conference in question. Instead, the organizer emailed the presentation slides to selected conference attendees. The attendees probably liked it that way.

But I still wanted to give the presentation.

And I also wanted to generalize the presentation so that it applied to ALL technology companies, not just the ones who were attending the conference.

So I recorded myself giving the presentation “Differentiating Your Company and Your Products/Services.” It’s ten minutes long, and you can view it now.

Differentiating Your Company and Your Products/Services (April 9, 2024)

This video obviously discusses differentiation, but also discusses customer focus as well as the seven questions your content creator should ask you before writing (including benefits and target audience). Not only are the seven questions good for creating content, but they are also good for differentiating content. (For example, why is your product/service so great while all of your competitors’ products/services suck?)

If you’re watching this video on your laptop, be sure to keep your smartphone handy because at the end of the video I display a QR code to obtain more information. Just point your phone at the QR code.

Of course, if you’re watching this video on your smartphone, you can’t read the displayed QR code. So just go to https://bredemarket.com/drive-tech/ instead.

Four Reasons Why Differentiators Fade Away

I’ve talked ad nauseum about the need for a firm to differentiate itself from its competitors. If your firm engages in “me too” marketing, prospects have no reason to choose you.

But what about companies that DO differentiate themselves…and suddenly stop doing so?

There are four reasons why companies could stop differentiating themselves:

The differentiator no longer exists.
The differentiator is no longer important to prospects.
The market has changed and the differentiator is no longer applicable.
The differentiator still exists, but the company forgot about it.

Let’s look at these in turn.

The differentiator no longer exists

Sometimes companies gain a temporary competitive advantage that disappears as other firms catch up. But more often, the company only pursues the differentiator temporarily.

In 1985, amid anxiety about trade deficits and the loss of American manufacturing jobs, Walton launched a “Made in America” campaign that committed Wal-Mart to buying American-made products if suppliers could get within 5 percent of the price of a foreign competitor. This may have compromised the bottom line in the short term, but Walton understood the long-term benefit of convincing employees and customers that the company had a conscience as well as a calculator.
From https://reclaimdemocracy.org/brief-history-of-walmart/.

Now some of you may not remember Walmart’s “Made in America” banners, but I can assure you they were prevalent in many Walmarts in the 1980s and 1990s. Sam Walton’s autobiography even featured the phrase.

From https://www.biblio.com/book/sam-walton-made-america-my-story/d/1389503897.

But as time passed, Walmart stocked fewer and fewer “Made in America” items as customers valued low prices over everything else. And some of the “Made in America” banners in Walmarts in the 1990s shouldn’t have been there:

“Dateline NBC” produced an exposé on the company’s sourcing practices. Although Wal-Mart’s “Made in America” campaign was still nominally in effect, “Dateline” showed that store-level associates had posted “Made in America” signs over merchandise actually produced in far away sweatshops. This sort of exposure was new to a company that had been a press darling for many years, and Wal-Mart’s stock immediately declined by 3 percent.
From https://reclaimdemocracy.org/brief-history-of-walmart/.

The decline was only temporary as Walmart stock bounced back. And 20 years later, the cycle would repeat as Walmart launched a similar “Made in USA” campaign in 2013, only to run into Federal Trade Commission (FTC) enforcement actions two years later.

The differentiator is no longer important

The Walmart domestic production episodes illustrate something else. If Walmart wanted to, it could have persevered and bought from domestic suppliers, even if the supplier price differential was greater than 5%.

But the buying customers didn’t really care.

Affordability was much more important to buyers than U.S. job creation.

From https://www.tasteofhome.com/collection/secrets-walmart-employees-wont-tell-you/.

So while labor leaders, politicians, and others may have complained about Walmart’s increasing reliance on Chinese goods, the company’s customers continued to do business with Walmart, bringing profitability to the company.

And before you decry the actions of consumers who act against their national self-interest…where was YOUR phone manufactured? China? Vietnam? Unless you own a Librem 5 USA, your phone isn’t from around here. We’re all Commies.

The market has changed

Sometimes the market changes and consumers look at things a little differently.

From https://www.calvert.co.uk/our-history/.

I’ve previously told the story of Mita, and its 1980s slogan “all we make are great copiers.” In essence, Mita had to adopt this slogan because, unlike its competitors, it did NOT have a diversified portfolio.

This worked for a while…until the “document solutions” industry (copiers and everything else) embraced digital technologies. Well, Fuji-Xerox, Ricoh and Konica did. Mita didn’t, and went bankrupt.

The former Mita is now part of Kyocera Document Solutions.

And stand-alone copiers aren’t even offered.

The company forgot

Before Walmart emphasized “Made in America” products, former (and present) stand-up comedian Steve Martin was dispensing tax advice.

“Steve.. how can I be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes?” First.. get a million dollars. Now.. you say, “Steve.. what do I say to the tax man when he comes to my door and says, ‘You.. have never paid taxes’?” Two simple words. Two simple words in the English language: “I forgot!”
From https://tonynovak.com/how-to-be-a-millionaire-and-not-pay-any-taxes/.

While the IRS will not accept this defense, there are times when people, and companies, forget things.

I know of one company that had a clear differentiator over most of its competition: the fact that a key component of its solution was self-authored, rather than being sourced from a third party.
For a time, the company strongly emphasized this differentiator, casting fear, uncertainty, and doubt against its competitors who depended upon third parties for this key component.
But time passes, priorities change, and the company’s website now buries this differentiator on a back page…making the company sound like all its competitors.

But the company has an impressive array of features, so there’s that.

Restore your differentiators

If your differentiators have faded away, or your former differentiators are no longer important, perhaps it’s time to re-emphasize them so that your prospects have a reason to choose you.

Ask yourself questions about why your firm is great, why all the other firms suck, and what benefits (not features) your customers enjoy that the competition’s customers don’t. Only THEN can you create content (or have your content creator do it for you).

Read the book: https://bredemarket.com/7Qs/.

A little postscript: originally I was only going to list three items in this post, but Hana LaRock counsels against this because bots default to three-item lists (see her item 4).

Addressing “How” and “Why” in That Order

This is my last chance to squeeze in a Bredemarket blog post before the end of the month, so I’ll just recycle some thoughts that I previously posted on LinkedIn.

Based on some thoughts originally shared by Taylor “Taz” Rodriguez about the perils of “me-too” marketing.

Let’s all be unique

Steve Martin on stage in the 1970s. (And yes I used the “let’s get small” version of this image.) By Jim Summaria – WP:Contact us – Licensing, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5578555

Years ago, Steve Martin had a routine in which he encouraged his audience to say, in unison, that they promise to be different and they promise to be unique.

Get it?

Apparently some present-day marketers don’t, according to Rodriguez.

If you want to SERIOUSLY grow a service-based company, you need to STOP with the generic social media captions!

We see it all day long, even on paid ads which is sad…

❌ “We help our clients stand out from the crowd!”

❌ “Our experienced team of _____ help to elevate your business!”
From https://www.linkedin.com/posts/madebytaz_marketingandadvertising-paidadvertising-socialmediamarketing-activity-7168953109514280960-9H1N/.

No, repeating the canned phrase about standing out from the crowd does NOT make you stand out from the crowd.

But wait. It gets worse.

The authenticity bot

When I reshared Rodriguez’s post, I wanted to illustrate it with an image that showed how many people use the phrase “stand out from the crowd.”

But while I couldn’t get that exact number on my smartphone search (a subsequent laptop search revealed 477 million search results), I got something else: Google Gemini’s experimental generative AI response to the question, bereft of irony just like everything else we’ve encountered in this exercise.

You see, according to Gemini, one way to stand out from the crowd is to “be authentic.”

Yes, Google Gemini really said that.

Google search results, including generative AI results.

Now I don’t know about a bot telling me to “be authentic.”

Rodriguez addresses “how” and “why”

Going back to Taylor “Taz” Rodriguez’s post, he had a better suggestion for marketers. Instead of using canned phrases, we should instead create original answers to these two questions:

HOW do you help your clients stand apart from the competition?

WHY have your past & current clientele chosen to work with you?
From https://www.linkedin.com/posts/madebytaz_marketingandadvertising-paidadvertising-socialmediamarketing-activity-7168953109514280960-9H1N/.

Why not “why” and “how”?

Now I know what my Bredemarket groupies are saying at this point.

Only one of these three groupies will survive. (And I shudder to think about what Bredemarket groupies would wear.) By Mike – Flickr: DSC_0657, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26475397

(There aren’t any Bredemarket groupies, but pretend for the moment that there are.)

Taz, “You’re Doing It Wrong™.” Because Simon Sinek insists that “why” is the most important question, “why” should take precedence over “how.”

To which I respond:

Sinek Schninek.

BOTH questions are important, both need to be addressed, and it really doesn’t matter which one you address first.

In fact, there are some very good reasons to start with the “how” question in this case. It’s wonderful for the marketer to focus on the question of how they stand apart from the competition.

And as a wildebeest lover who grasps a keyboard with my cold dead hands, and with an onboarding process that ensures Bredemarket’s content is the right content for my customers, I can certainly agree with this focus.

Even if my onboarding process does start with “why.”

My “seven questions” as of January 18, 2024. To see the latest version of the e-book on my seven questions, visit https://bredemarket.com/7qs/.

But hey, if you want to address my first two questions in reverse order, go for it.

Find out more here.

The Pros and Cons of Discriminating Your Product by Quantifying Your Benefits

Some firms make claims and don’t support them, while others support their claims with quantified benefits. But does quantifying help or harm the firms that do it? This pudding post answers this question…and then twists toward the identity/biometrics market at the end.

The “me too” players in the GCP market

Whoops.

In that heading above, I made a huge mistake by introducing an acronym without explaining it. So I’d better correct my error.

GCP stands for Glowing Carbonated Pudding.

I can’t assume that you already knew this acronym, because I just made it up. But I can assure you that the GCP market is a huge market…at least in my brain. All the non-existent kids love the scientifically advanced and maximally cool pudding that glows in the dark and has tiny bubbles in it.

Glowing Carbonated Pudding. Designed by Google Bard. Yeah, Google Bard creates images now.

Now if you had studied this non-existent market like I have, you’ll realize from the outset that most of the players don’t really differentiate their offerings. Here are a few examples of firms with poor product marketing:

Jane Spain GCP: “Trust us to provide good GCP.”
Betty Brazil GCP: “Trust us to provide really good GCP.”
Clara Canada GCP: “Trust us to provide great GCP.”

You can probably figure out what happened here.

The CEO at Betty Brazil told the company’s product marketers, “Do what Jane Spain did but do it better.”
After that Clara Canada’s CEO commanded, “Do what Betty Brazil did but do it better.” (I’ll let you in on a little secret. Clara Canada’s original slogan refereneced “the best GCP,” but Legal shot that down.)

Frankly, these pitches are as powerful as those offered by a 17x certified resume writer.

The quantified GCP

But another company, Wendy Wyoming, decided to differentiate itself, and cited independent research as its differentiator.

Wendy Wyoming Out of This World GCP satisfies you, and we have independent evidence to prove it!

The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology, as part of its Pudding User Made (PUM, not FRTE) Test, confirmed that 80% of all Wendy Wyoming Out of This World GCP mixes result in pudding that both glows and is carbonated. (Mix WW3, submitted November 30, 2023; not omnigarde-003)

Treat your child to science-backed cuisine with Wendy Wyoming Out of This World GCP!Wendy Wyoming is a top tier (excluding Chinese mixes) GCP provider.

But there are other competitors…

The indirect competitor who questions the quantified benefits

There are direct competitors that provide the same product as Wendy Wyoming, Jane Spain, and everyone else.

And then there are indirect competitors who provide non-GCP alternatives that can substitute for GCPs.

For example, Polly Pennsylvania is NOT a GCP provider. It makes what the industry calls a POPS, or a Plain Old Pudding Sustenance. Polly Pennsylvania questions everything about GCP…and uses Wendy Wyoming’s own statistics against it.

Fancy technologies have failed us.

If you think that one of these GCP puddings will make your family happy, think again. A leading GCP provider has publicly admitted that 1 out of every 5 children who buy a GCP won’t get a GCP. Either it won’t glow, or it’s not carbonated. Do you want to make your kid cry?

Treat your child to the same pudding that has satisfied many generations. Treat your child to Polly Pennsylvania Perfect POPS.

Pennsylvania Perfect remembers.

So who wins?

It looks like Polly Pennsylvania and Wendy Wyoming have a nasty fight on their hands. One that neck-deep marketers like to call a “war.” Except that nobody dies. (Sadly, that’s not true.)

Some people think that Wendy Wyoming wins because 4 out of 5 of their customers receive true GCP.
Others think that Polly Pennsylvaia wins because 5 out of 5 of their customers get POPS pudding.

But it’s clear who lost.

All the Jane Spains and Betty Brazils who didn’t bother to create a distinctive message.

Don’t be Jane Spain. Explain why your product is the best and all the other products aren’t.

Copying the competition doesn’t differentiate you. Trust me.

From https://www.yourgreenpal.com/blog/is-there-an-uber-for-lawn-care

The “hungry people” (target audience) for THIS post

Oh, and if you didn’t figure it out already, this post was NOT intended for scientific pudding manufacturers. It was intended for identity/biometric firms who can use some marketing and writing help. Hence the references to NIST and the overused word “trust.”

If you’re hungry to kickstart your identity/biometric firm’s written content, click on the image below to learn about Bredemarket’s services.

Drive content results with Bredemarket Identity Firm Services.

Why Your 17X Certified Resume Writer Pitches Are Failing

Dear 17X Certified Resume Writer,

You may think your marketing tactics and sequence are foolproof. But they’re not. Read on to see why.

And if you’re NOT a 17x certified resume writer, skip to the bottom to see how the resume writing market lacks differentiation. But what about YOUR market?

Why your marketing tactics and sequence don’t work

From observing you and dozens of your 17x certified resume writing competitors that I’ve encountered (and over 14,000 of your competitors that I haven’t encountered), here are the marketing tactics and sequence that ALL of you are using, and why they are COMPLETELY ineffective.

Find a LinkedIn profile with a green “Open to Work” banner.

From https://www.linkedin.com/in/jbredehoft/.

Send a message to the banner-bearer with canned phrases like “Thank you for connecting with a 17x certified resume writer,” or “May I ask what job you are seeking?” If you are using the same language as every other 17x certified resume writer out there, then the prospect has no reason to purchase YOUR services.
Immediately demand that the prospect provide a copy of their resume. Never mind that the prospect’s LinkedIn profile already has the same information as the resume. If you are requesting information that is already available online, then the prospect has no reason to purchase YOUR services.
When your qualifications as a 17x certified resume writer are challenged, respond with stupid stuff. For example, say that your services can place your prospect into LinkedIn’s top 10% of candidates for a position. If your “expert knowledge” betrays that you have NO expertise, then the prospect has no reason to purchase YOUR services.

From a LinkedIn InMail from a 17x certified resume writer.

When all else fails, talk about the respectability of the third-party website where you advertise your services (usually Fiverr). If you talk about Fiverr (which has over 14,000 resume writers), then the prospect has no reason to purchase YOUR services.

From https://www.fiverr.com/search/gigs?query=resume%20writing

Most importantly, ensure that your pitch is the same as the pitch of your 13,999+ competitors. This is critically important—don’t provide ANY reason why your 17x resume writing services are better than those of your 13,999+ competitors. If you provide NO reason why you are better than your competition, all of whom are bombarding LinkedIn “open to work” folks with canned pitches daily, then the prospect has no reason to purchase YOUR services.

So this is why your tactics don’t work.

Why did I rewrite something that I already wrote a few weeks ago?

If you’re a regular reader of the Bredemarket blog—that’s a joke; if you haven’t read my LinkedIn profile, you certainly haven’t read the Bredemarket blog before—then you know that I recently wrote a post entitled “Five Reasons Why 17X Certified Resume Writer Pitches Fail.” It approached your marketing tactics from a different perspective.

But one afternoon when I received three separate LinkedIn InMails from three separate 17x certified resume writers in the space of five minutes, I figured that I needed to address this issue again, in a more pointed fashion. (Yes, I iterate.)

Now I don’t want you to read the entirety of my January 8 post. I know that you are very busy searching for “open to work” people to ask your canned question about their desired position. But I do suggest that you read the fourth of my five reasons why your pitches fail, and take the steps to ensure that you don’t sound exactly the same as your thousands of competitors.

*Dionne Quintuplets – School Days*, painting by Andrew Loomis, 1938. By Andrew Loomis – https://www.flickr.com/photos/lac-bac/7797309642/in/album-72157631099965608/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=56000992

Hope this helps.

That’s all I have to say. 17x certified resume writers can stop reading here.

Seriously.

Stop. Get to work.

For those of you who are NOT 17x certified resume writers

OK, time for me to talk to the rest of you. It’s just me, you, and the wildebeest.

Black wildebeest. By derekkeats – Flickr: IMG_4955_facebook, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14620744

Frankly, I doubt that any of the 17x certified resume writers have even made it to this point of the blog post. Like I said, they’re too busy seeking their next prospects.

But the whole 17x certified resume writer market strikes me as one which is sorely lacking in differentiation, competitive analysis, and customer focus. The vast majority of people who provide resume services don’t even attempt to say why their services are superior and the services of their 13,999+ competitors are inferior. And the vast majority focus on themselves rather than the specific needs of their prospects. Why should I choose one of these 17x certified resume writers, and not one of their competitors?

But it’s not enough to take a look at a lack of differentiation in one market. Now I have to take a look at myself. Have I done an adequate job of differentiating Bredemarket’s marketing and writing services from those of my other content marketing competitors? I already know that Canva content creator G from Ray of Social is a much better singer than I am.

From “epic Western” singing to Canva queendom. Sorry, G, but this is still my favo(u)rite song. From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q04LZgFpP9Y

And perhaps you should take a look at yourself. Have you done an adequate job of differentiating YOUR company from the competition? Do your prospects have a reason to choose you?

If you are employed by a technology firm and need your content to stand out from the crowd, let me explain why Bredemarket’s services can drive content results, how I provide services that no one else does, and what we will do together to create that content your company desperately needs.

Drive content results with Bredemarket Technology Firm Services.

Postscript

Just in case these questions come up.

I have nothing against Fiverr as a platform, or against similar platforms such as Upwork. I’m sure that there are good people on Fiverr, and I don’t believe that there is a causation between people being on Fiverr and people providing bad services. But I do believe that there is a correlation between Fiverr and bad services, and that if you are on Fiverr, it is incumbent for you to prove that you are qualified to offer your services. (That goes for people like me who AREN’T on Fiverr also.)
In addition, I have nothing against Nigeria, or India, or any country where a service provider may reside. While the three separate InMails that I received from three separate 17x certified resume writers within five minutes were ALL from Nigeria (Anita from Abuja, Helen from Lagos State, and Renee from Akwa Ibom State), that doesn’t necessarily mean that Nigerians are bad service providers (or that people in the United States and other “first world” countries are GOOD service providers). But again a service provider’s origin is a risk factor that you may need to consider when selecting someone.
Well, unless they’re a rich and respectable person, like a prince, rather than some poor Fiverr user.