Choose Your Competitors

It may sound strange, but you can, in fact, choose your competitors. Actually, you SHOULD be choosing your competitors. Competition is fierce so it is up to you to shape your own competitive landscape so that the choice is clear for your customer. Sound a bit shady? It shouldn’t — there are many successful models. Two of the most clear and well-known examples? Coke vs. Pepsi and Mac vs. PC.

Coke and Pepsi have been battling it out for decades now, and I guarantee you they wouldn’t have it any other way. There are hundreds of sodas out there — the market is flooded, yet two companies command a vast majority of the market. Forget store brands or small companies like Jones that are just a blip on the soda radar. By choosing to go head-to-head, Coke and Pepsi have relegated everyone else to 2nd tier status. The benefits? Because each company only has to focus resources on one serious competitor, they know EVERYTHING about each other. The battle is fairly cut and dried because the opposing force is right in front of you. No guerrilla attacks or multi-front wars to worry about. Sure, there may be a sneak attack on occasion, but when you’re fighting an enemy that is well understood and evenly matched, the wounds won’t be too serious.

Apple has taken a different approach to defining and choosing its competitors. When you walk into a computer store you may find 6 or 7 major brands to choose from. In differentiating itself from competitors, Apple could try to demonstrate how they’re better than Sony or Dell and be making essentially the same argument they’re making today. Instead, they’ve chosen an Us vs. Them approach. Their television ad campaign for computers is based on this strategy. They’ve portrayed the consumer’s options as choosing between a Mac or everyone else. In this way they’ve collapsed their entire universe of competitors down to one: PC. So now, rather than trying to battle it out with the different brands, one by one, they’ve told the consumer that the choice is really between the fun, dynamic and unique Mac or one of those other guys who are really all the same. In this way they’ve accomplished 2 objectives: dismissing a multi-front hardware war in favor of a single front operating system war and, at the same time, reinforcing their image as a creative lifestyle choice.

Does your business need a blog?

Everybody’s doing it. Everybody. Seriously, have you seen all the blogs out there? I’m not sure when the Doogie Howser diary went from private to public, but blogging is here to stay. So, should you take your business to the blogosphere?

First, to be clear, this is probably the wrong question to ask. A blog is one tool of many in the business leader’s arsenal for dynamic online interaction. I recently spoke about this at a CHAMPS LINKS lunch. The topic there was Facebook for Business, but the principle is the same. One of the things Black Lab does is help businesses with online and social networking strategies. We start from a strategic perspective, asking: “What am I trying to achieve with my online strategy?” and move on from there. But I get asked specifically about blogging a lot, so here are a few things to consider if you’re mulling the addition of ‘amateur journalist’ to your resume:

– Who is your audience? An internal (employees) blog will have a different style and tone than an external (customers, vendors, etc.) blog. Be mindful of who you’re talking to.

– What do you want to say? Do you want to be informative, spark discussion, market your work? There are many possibilities to choose from, but choose something. Having a theme or focus helps build an audience.

– Who will do the writing? There is nothing worse than slogging through something that is not well written. In fact, because there are so many options, you’ll loose readers with rampant misspellings and awkward sentences. That being said, blogs are much less formal so the tone can be casual and small mistakes are tolerated. Just don’t forget that a blog is part of your brand, so take it seriously.

– Can you post regularly? This is one I’ve struggled with lately. Things get busy, so something has to slide and the past few weeks it has been my blog. If you want to build a significant readership, daily posting is optimal. However, I see a noticeable uptick when I post just three days a week. This isn’t as hard as it might sound. Blog entries are generally short (I try to stay under 500 words) so the time investment is manageable.

One idea I’ve seen used successfully is the pre-opening blog. If, for example, you’re a retailer working on your store build-out then a blog is a good way to let people know how things are moving along — introduce them to your store and get them involved in your progress. A good one I’ve seen is Hill’s Kitchen. The owner used Facebook to make short entries as she prepped her store for almost a year. Peregrine Espresso has a blog with far more content than their actual web page. A blog is a free or low cost way to experiment with content before spending several thousand dollars on a comprehensive website.

So, do you need a blog? Maybe. Definitely don’t be intimidated by the idea. Think about your online strategy and what you want to accomplish and, if the situation warrants it, dive in!

I Heart Local Businesses, Part 3

Peregrine at Eastern Market

First, check out Part 1 for some background and Part 2 just for the entertaining reading.

For our final installment on how local businesses outcompete national chains, we’re following up the game theory discussion with something a little more fun: giving your customer more for free. Harkening back to the point about flexibility in Part 2, unless a national chain has run the numbers and confirmed an initiative will meet or exceed the ROI hurdle rate … I don’t think I even need to finish that sentence for a local business owner to see where your advantage lies. You’re you, and you don’t need a finance team to tell you what sells. You see something that makes customers happy, you do it. Especially when that something makes the customer feel like they’re getting more for their money (making your product a better value) without you making any additional investment, then everybody’s happy. Take Peregrine Espresso as a concrete example. This Eastern Market business gets my dime over the nearby chain store every time. Why? Because they take the time to draw a picture in my drink. Seriously.

Is Tradition Stale?

Everyone tends to reflect on tradition this time of year but when it comes to thinking about tradition in a business sense, the first industry that comes to mind for me are newspapers. For generations, they have been (and continue to be, according to statistics) consumers’ most credible source for news and information. They survived television coming into everyone’s home, but are struggling to find successful business models for the internet age. The digital economy is not very kind to companies more interested in preserving an old business model than those willing to completely rethink how to approach a market (in this instance, online-only newspapers, blogs, vlogs, etc.) But does this mean a more traditional business — or more importantly, YOUR more traditional business — is destined for slow decline while consumers look to new economy companies to meet their needs?

Stay on the lookout for opportunities

I’ve been hearing lots of friends and colleagues talk about how the economic downturn has impacted their professions — cancelled meetings, contracts on hold, travel bans and the like. So I thought this profile of Singapore Airlines was very interesting. I’m the last person to advocate using an airline as an example of how to be smart and flexible during tough times,

Be Careful What You Market

You’ve probably seen Chevron’s latest ad campaign:  The Power of Human Energy. If you’ve been walking around with your eyes closed, here’s a pic of their ad saturation from Farragut North.

When I first saw the campaign, I liked it. Black gold turns green. Actually, I wanted to like it.

The Business Section

The Ultimate Marketing Campaign:  It is hard not to be impressed with how Team Obama has run this presidential campaign.  I’m not talking about what they’re saying — this isn’t political commentary — it is how they’re saying it.  And it seems they are saying it so well, Ad Age recently named Barak Obama Marketer of the Year for 2008.  Brand Obama is recognized for being consistent and disciplined; making you feel part of a huge movement but with a message that is still personal.  Of course, not everyone can hire one of Facebook’s founders to help craft a brand, but there’s certainly much to be learned from this example.