We chat with many organizations who are looking to build their marketing programs and through our initial discovery, we often ask them to tell us a little bit about their competition. We are amazed how frequently we hear responses like, “Oh, we don’t have any competitors, no one can do what we do.
Fighting our instinctive reflex to fliply say, “Oh, really…” we choose, rather, to remind them that, although they may have a proprietary product or service that exists nowhere else in the world, their prospective customers are looking for solutions that they may be able to find through dozens of other channels.
Consider the manufacturer of a completely hypothetical professional presentation software platform that allows the user to conduct amazingly elegant presentations projected directly from their mobile devices. Assuming this technology doesn’t already exist, this company could accurately argue, “no one else can do what we do.”
However, people have the need to simply and efficiently display their presentations and there are dozens of ways to do that. Those with this need will search for all possible solutions and will likely be faced with multiple options; which may or may not include our fictitious proprietary supplier. There’s always more than one way to solve a problem, regardless of your unique offering, and that means a landscape filled with competitors. And, you need to know about all of them.
When developing a marketing strategy for Challenger Brands, understanding our competitors’ approach is an important component of building our own plan. We generally like to get a thorough understanding of our competitors by analyzing their:
- General Positioning
- Target Consumer / User
- Tagline
- Brand Strengths
- Brand Weaknesses
- Key Points of Difference
- Corporate Color
- Social Media Presence
- Search Strength
- PPC Reach
- Ad Spend
Every brand has competitors and Challenger Brands can, and must learn from them, as well as exploit the holes in their game.
For a competitive analysis within your industry, give us a call. At Gumas, when it comes to helping “Challenger Brands”, we have no competitors.
Until next time…
