In 1975, The Pepsi Challenge marketing promotion took the industry by storm.
There was a certain brilliance to it. An unashamed confidence.
It's one thing to use advertisements to say "we're better", but it's something else to say "we're better, and now, we'll show you how."
Still, there's a difference though between knowing your competition and insulting them.
The wrong thing to do
- 1. Provoke your competition (and its customers) with slanderous commentary. Without a planned "attack" what are you going to do when an entire community of fierce loyalists responds?
- 2. Engage in hostile discussions among your competition's customers. The quickest way to lose a potential customer is by insulting them.
- 3. Use social media to publish a series of rants. Instead, abide by the 24-hour rule. Write your thoughts down and file them away. Come back in a day and see if they're still worthy of being blasted.
- 4. Pick a fight simply because they're "the competition." If your industry is competitive, there's likely a company that performs as good, or better, than you do. Picking a fight with a superior brand does nothing. Challenging an on-par brand is something else.
- 5. Mimic your competition. Copying industry trends only creates an industry of companies all doing the same thing. Be the wild card and break away from the monotonous pack.
The right thing to do
- 1. Become educated about the players in your industry. Know their vulnerabilities. Track their activity with alerts. It's easier -- and more effective -- to sell your own product when you know everything about your competitors'.
- 2. Buy your competitor's product. Try it for yourself. How is it shipped? What's the post-purchase communication like? Do they oversell? Now, are the opportunities to improve your own?
- 3. Speak intellectually about your competitor's products and leverage your own product's selling points. Be your industry's expert, the one-stop resource. Welcome the "if you like Competitor X's product..." comparison conversations. If you have the product to back it up, it's the easiest way to 'turn' a prospect.
- 4. Respect your competitors. Nobody wants to support the pompous, loud-mouthed company. Acknowledge what they do well, but promote what you do better.
- 5. Avoid the temptation to respond to others' combative remarks. I know, it's personal. But let it roll off. Be the bigger person -- the one that's far too busy to be bothered with such trivial remarks.
How many sodas in your fridge?
How many of your customers do you think are exclusive to you? Not many. And thinking otherwise is simply pompous. Ignorant even.
After all, do you drink only one brand of soda, do you drive the cars made from only one manufacturer, do you read books by only one publisher, or see the movies from just one studio? I don't.
Be the intelligent alternative. Publicly criticizing a company (and its products) without merit only serves to damage your own brand's reputation.
So instead of spending time and effort trying to tear down another brand, reallocate that time towards identifying ways of differentiating your own.
Don't beat industry players at their game, create your own.
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