We know they’re around, we know they’re present, we know they could be sniff­ing around our cus­tomer base, which is why we always have to respect our competition.

No one wants to sit quietly and see you build your mar­ket share and develop your rap­port within the mar­ket place, we all want some of it. We all want a share of time (and money) and mar­ket­ing has to extend bey­ond the com­pan­ies we work with. Here are some responses to expect from your com­pet­i­tion and the signs:

• Copy­ing Your Offering

The suc­cess of one product invari­ably means a response of a sim­ilar offer­ing. The most high pro­file example this week has been the US pat­ent trial, where Apple has accused Sam­sung of steal­ing iPhone fea­tures, namely scrolling and multi-​torch. On a more famil­iar com­par­ison, we only need to look at Net­flix tak­ing mar­ket­share away from Love­Film and Blockbuster.

Your Solu­tion = don’t copy, innov­ate and never rest on your laurels

• Your Are Invisible

Oper­at­ing in a vacuum and pre­tend­ing you never exist is a dan­ger­ous game. There are always altern­at­ives out there.

The Twit­ter land­scape is full of dir­ect mes­sages that are purely brand related and how choos­ing a par­tic­u­lar product/​service is the best option. Repeated ‘sales mes­sages’ pro­duce poten­tial cus­tom­ers who are less will­ing to trust.

A sens­ible route is to acknow­ledge your mar­ket­place. A recent example has seen the Co-​operative bank acknow­ledge this by prom­ising to provide ‘customer-​led, eth­ic­ally driven’ bank­ing and pledge to shake up the sec­tor (we’ll wait and see) by acquir­ing 632 branches from Lloyds Bank­ing Group.

Your Solu­tion = cham­pion authen­ti­city and build trust in your marketplace

• Going Head To Head

When product offer­ings are sim­ilar, the most obvi­ous choice is to state that your product is the best and engage via the com­mu­nic­a­tions mix. A cur­rent example is Adi­das pin­ning its adspend on a 17 day cover-​wrap for free news­pa­per Metro in the battle for Olympic loy­alty from Nike. Nike on the other hand have released it’s Olympic ad cam­paign ‘Great­ness isn’t reserved for the chosen few in one spe­cial city.’

Your Solu­tion = inspire loy­alty, lead, don’t sit quietly

• Deliv­er­ing A Bet­ter Product Than You

This is the most effect­ive response by provid­ing a ser­vice that has higher per­ceived value than you can provide. The end res­ult is more cus­tom­ers, big­ger mar­ket share and cus­tomer loy­alty. It could be based on speed, it could be price, so keep­ing to busi­ness as usual could be the most dam­aging option to go for.

Your Solu­tion = don’t fol­low, look to lead, keep think­ing, keep cre­at­ing

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