Typical case for competitive marketing

When you are about to buy a mobile phone, which brand jumps out first in your mind? Apple iPhone is undoutedly the one leading the option list in the market. But what are the alternatives ? If you don’t have enough budget or you need an Android for a particular purpose, which brand are you thinking of right away when you are composing the list ? Years ago, Huawei was always marketing with the slogon “To overcome Apple in the industry”. You would think of Huawei phone unconciously when you are reviewing the configuration of iPhone. How about now ? Maybe you’ve already paid attention to Xiaomi in recent years. Xiaomi CEO Jun Lei has been saying that Xiaomi will fully model itself on Apple. It’ll produce mobile phones with same or superior experience than iPhone. Is that possible ? We can’t conclude yet. However, by comparing earning report of two companies, the spending on development , gap of talents and supply chain controlling can’t give out any optimistic prediction for Xiaomi yet. Why do they keep on marketing with something they can’t make it for a while ?

Why does enterprise need to do competive marketing ?

If such enterprise don’t think they can overtake the marketshare from Apple, why does Huawei and Xiaomi are always trying to bundle their brand recogniztion with Apple ? The purpose is not to convince customers that they can be the better choice than Apple in one day, however, the reason is that they hope to absorb as many users from the user group they are targeting. Android phone manufaturers are targeting the audience group who are willing to buy iPhone but with some particular reasons that they can’t. In that case, the second place in the list is quite important. The one who sits after Apple in the list will absorb the most of the users falling from the first layer of the funnel.

The way is called competitive marketing. The competitive marketing is a marketing approach that gives consumers many options by offering similar products with different approach of branding and marketing

How is competitive marketing happening in digital era ?

In the digital marketing area, competitive marketing exists as well. For example, if you search with word “Google Cloud” on Google, Amzaon AWS or Ali Cloud will jump out as the search ad content on the top above the real Google Cloud website link in the search result. Consumers may be confused or interested in what’s promoted by the Ad, then they may click the link and land in the competitors website instead.Obviously, the competitive marketing is hurting brands on both brand recognition and the marketing performance.

Brands have to be quite careful about other competitors that may add much more cost to marketing activities. There are many more cases in the digital marketing area which are typically competitive marketing. As the enterprises can’t build effective barrier in many industries, there are always more than 1 or even more than 10 outstanding competitors in a single industry. They are delivering quite similar products and services to consumers. Hence, the competive marketing can’t be avoided.

Brand recognition is in risk and how to defend ?

If no one can avoid the competitive marketing, how to reduce the harmness, especially for the industry leaders ? Here are some tips that are in practice by different industy leaders

1. Invest more on the products and cutting-edge technologies. No matter what kind of marketing messages delivered to your customers, the customers only pay for the products which are best satisfying their requirements. Meanwhile, to keep on investing on unique technologies will build barrier of your company for a while and you can enjoy the interesting of the period when you are the only on providing that to your customers. Even competitive marketing can’t hurt you much if you are doing that.
2. Absorb the talents of the industry. To be outstanding in the industry is always based on talents you have. Make sure the best talents in the industry are working for you that will reduce the risk caused by competitive marketing.
3. Think further and always plan for the future. Invest resources not only on short-term objectives but also on the objective in the long future. Do worry about the outcome. You need to be patient with such investment as that will be your barrier in the future. Moreover , such investment will bring you different continuous barriers.
4. Monitor the media channels and defend the brand whenever it’s necessary. Finally, to defend your brand, monitor the media channels. Whenever you competitors unleash competitive marketing campaign to your brand, use the legal and rule tools to fight back. For example, if you find your brand is overtaken by other brand Advertisement on Google, you can claim your brand safety on Google that will remove such digital Advertisement whenever users are searching for related keywords.