Beating Large Competitors in Your Marketing Campaigns

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In my recently published article in Colorado BIZ magazine titled How to Hit Hard and Clean in Your Marketing Campaigns I drew a number of parallels between how the current presidential candidates are handling their campaigns and how b2b marketers should go after their competition. Here are some highlights.

On political marketing:

Another high-stakes presidential campaign is now playing out before us, bringing cyclical feelings that range from hope to nausea. This year displays the same high rate of spin and cut-to-the-bone negativity as always. While B2B marketers may not have the bare-knuckle messaging latitude that the presidential campaigns do, this season does have us thinking a lot about messaging and incumbents. Even if you’re not in the hunt for political office, you do have competition, and they are out there trying to woo your prospect base every day.

On comparative campaigning:

In presidential campaigns, attacking the incumbent is the default strategy — after all, there’s only one other “product” to compete with in your market. In marketing campaigns, attacking the incumbent can be a rewarding activity for a smaller company going against a larger, more established company, but you have to do it the right way.

First of all, the upside: If you are the little company in your market, you can leverage the brand equity of a larger competitor by loudly and compellingly comparing yourself favorably to a much better-known brand. For example, when I led the marketing team at a web-based (SaaS) content management solution that completing against industry giants like Documentum/EMC, FileNet/IBM, and Microsoft, we did just that. In our marketing campaigns we loudly beat the drum about the ease and cost savings of our web delivery model and invited head-to-head comparisons by stating that we had 80% of the larger competitors’ functionality at 20% of the price.

On fighting against the big guy:

When faced with dogged determination from a small rival, a CEO I worked for stated “I don’t care what it takes; we will never lose a bid to Company X.” Our CEO planned to crush the other company with low bids, eating into our margins, but keeping them out of the accounts.

This is the premier hazard of being the terrier that chases the lion. What do you do if you catch a large predator? This is why differentiation and positioning is so critical to making an ‘attack the incumbent’ strategy work. You need to have a defensible position in your marketing campaigns so that, when you do attract the industry giant’s attention, you’ve got them beat on terms that favor you. As Sun Tzu advised in The Art of War, you should never attack superior forces head on.

Republished with author's permission from original post.

Christopher Ryan
Christopher Ryan is CEO of Fusion Marketing Partners, a B2B marketing consulting firm and interim/fractional CMO. He blogs at Great B2B Marketing and you can follow him at Google+. Chris has 25 years of marketing, technology, and senior management experience. As a marketing executive and services provider, Chris has created and executed numerous programs that build market awareness, drive lead generation and increase revenue.

1 COMMENT

  1. In agreement with the ancient Chinese philospher on attacking superior forces. I think another good quote from him as relates to comparitive campaigning would be “a leader leads by example not by force.” You can’t persuade the market that your products are better just by proclaiming it repeatedly. You have to back up all your claims with content and proficient service. Then watch the competition fade away in your rearview mirror.

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