How to Reverse Engineer White Space
Whether you know to call it whitespace or not, every organization is trying to capture whitespace in their industry. Whitespace can be understood simply as the under explored markets, missed opportunities, and the unrealized needs of your consumer.
Not understanding whitespace would be like starting a green rubber garden hose company with the notion that you’re going to move the needle for the front yards of American homeowners everywhere. It’s been done, it’s being done, and no one needs your help with that concept.
Capturing whitespace is a business goldmine.
This is why from a marketing perspective and a business strategy perspective, we’re not looking for a fight. We’d rather have zero competition than to fight tooth and nail for relevance and profit margins.
How to Hunt for Whitespace in a Cloudy Market
Unless you’re going to invent something that creates a new market, you’ll likely find yourself in a market full of competitors. All hope is not lost, however.
For Jesse and Emily Cole, they owned a business that would be miserable even if they were one of the good ones! They are now the prime examples of business owners in a brutally competitive market who built their own whitespace.
SPOILER ALERT: they now run a business estimated to be worth $500 Million with no real competitor in sight.
Jesse Cole began his career in baseball as the general manager of the Gastonia Grizzlies in 2008. The collegiate summer league team was in the Coastal Plains League, which is essentially like a minor league baseball league for college baseball players.
I played a fair amount of games against the Gastonia Grizzlies and I can tell you this business is the epitome of bad business. It’s not just Gastonia, but the whole industry. The Grizzlies are like every other team in the league in a state and a country with endless leagues filled with endless teams just like them. The days are long, the margins are low, the games are boring, and the list goes on to why this is an unremarkable business.
How did they turn it around?
They looked at all of the worst parts of the customer experience and they did the opposite. Think about what makes Minor League Baseball suck:
Long, boring games
No fan engagement
Expensive concessions
Every competitor offers the same experience
Baseball has lots of wasted downtime
Unwritten rules in baseball discourage showmanship
Rather than compete with everyone in Minor League Baseball and participate in a losing premise, Jesse Cole and his wife bought a Minor League Baseball team in Savannah Georgia, named them the Bananas, and made up their own sport: Banana Ball.
The Savannah Bananas have become a case study is creating whitespace. The Bananas have 4.2 million followers on Instagram, while the Tampa Bay Rays who are leading the American League in Major League Baseball have just 558,000 followers. They sell out every game and have a four million person waitlist for tickets. Read that again. Four million people waitlisted.
They’ve created whitespace by not trying to compete in baseball, but with their own rules which include things like:
Two hour time limit. It’s family friendly, less boring, and people know what they are getting into.
Each inning is worth a point. This keeps games relevant and immune to blow outs.
There are no walks, no bunting, no mound visits. These are all the least exciting things about baseball, so they just eliminated them.
Fans can make outs. If a spectator catches a foul ball cleanly, the batter is registered “out.” How’s that for engagement?
Concessions are FREE! All food and beverages are free, which is a huge plus for family outings.
The list goes on, but you can see that this is different.
The entire game is a spectacle with zero down time and the players live to entertain from choreographed dances to guest appearances from celebrities. This is why nearly all minor league baseball teams are unremarkable and are working hard to keep the lights on, while the Savannah Bananas are on their way to be worth a billion dollars.
If you find yourself in a noisy market, you’re going to have to create signal amongst the noise or die clawing for relevance. If you can use the Savannah Bananas as a model, ask yourself what are the worst parts of the customer experience in your industry?
When you find or create whitespace, you’ll play in a league of your own.
TAKE ACTION:
AUDIT. What are the universal pain points of your business? Think about complaints and inefficiencies that not just your customers experience but also the customers of your competitors. What industry norms are you following to your own detriment?
PRACTICE. Practice changing the worst parts of your industry for your customer. Can you create a new experience in your industry by reversing unhelpful norms?