For a long time now, Vistaprint.com has dominated the printing of short-run full colour business cards for small businesses. Indeed, I've been a devoted customer and champion of Vistaprint since I started my own company back in 2002.
I've just discovered a new company, however, that has taken the flexibility of digital printing and run with it way further than VP has.
The company is Moo.com, and they allow you to use up to 50 images in a run. So, if you printed 50 cards, each of them could be unique.
That interests me for SO many reasons.
First, I can can see the possibilities for networking, with a deck of business cards each with a different coaching model printed on the back. Imagine tailoring your cards to your prospects so that once you know their key problem, you can give them a card with the right model for their problem (though of course they'll need you to implement it)
Or how about creating decks of cards with language patterns (if you're an NLPer), or your product catalogue, or whatever you wanted, and leaving a prospect with an entire set at the end of the meeting. Or giving them out to people at the end of a course as a reminder...
The possibilities are endless.
Of course Moo only do cards and stickers at the moment, so Vistaprint are safe because of all the other products they do. But cards have always been the way Vistaprint got customers into their funnel: you bought the cards, then the stickers, then the pens, and the signs, and ... and... and...
And now that's being taken away from them. Hmm. That's a BIG danger to Vistaprint. And a big opportunity for Moo.
So then I got to thinking about exactly what Moo have done in marketing terms.
First, they specialised in one single aspect of printing: they do business cards, and that's about it.
Then, they took one aspect of the technology - the flexibility of digital print - which pretty much all their competitors make use of, but in a limited way and built it up into a key differentiator.
I'll be interested to see where Moo go next. Will they go for more variations on card production? Or will they go for more products? It's a key question.
And MY question to you (there had to be one, come on!) is this.
What are your competitors doing in a half hearted way that you could build into a key point of differentiation?
Maybe it's to do with the way services are delivered, or perhaps a single aspect of the product or service itself.
Is there a market that would pay a premium for someone to be very good at just that one aspect?
And could you build a business from it?
