Competitive Marketing Strategy

Competitive marketing strategy deals with ways to understand and out market a
company’s competitors.

It is important to have a clear indication of what services and products are being offered
by other companies as a way to keep a competitive advantage. Marketing strategies may
be used to distinguish company in business-to-business marketing, Internet marketing,
e-commerce marketing, and other areas.

At Dynamic Digital Advertising, a professional custom web design and development

company, offer several solutions to gaining and maintaining a competitive advantage.
Talented staff of web designers, programmers, graphic artists, and writers works closely
to provide keyword research, keyword content development, and search engine
optimization. To accommodate Internet businesses, make a wide range of services, such
as customized shopping cart systems, available to provide company with added
distinction and security.

Competitor Analysis Strategy

Competitor Analysis is an important part of the strategic planning process. Some
businesses think it is best to get on with their own plans and ignore the competition.
Others become obsessed with tracking the actions of competitors (often using underhand
or illegal methods). Many businesses are happy simply to track the competition, copying
their moves and reacting to changes.

Competitor analysis has several important roles in strategic planning:

• To help management understand their competitive advantages/disadvantages relative to

competitors

• To generate understanding of competitors’ past, present (and most importantly) future

strategies

• To provide an informed basis to develop strategies to achieve competitive advantage in

the future

• To help forecast the returns that may be made from future investments (e.g. how will
competitors respond to a new product or pricing strategy?

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Sources of information for competitor analysis

Davidson (1997) describes how the sources of competitor information can be neatly
grouped into three categories:

• Recorded data: this is easily available in published form either internally or externally.
Good examples include competitor annual reports and product brochures;

• Observable data: this has to be actively sought and often assembled from several
sources. A good example is competitor pricing;

• Opportunistic data: to get hold of this kind of data requires a lot of planning and
organization. Much of it is “anecdotal”, coming from discussions with suppliers,
customers and, perhaps, previous management of competitors.

The table below lists possible sources of competitor data using Davidson’s
categorization:

Recorded Data Observable Data Opportunistic Data

Annual report & accounts Pricing / price lists Meetings with suppliers
Press releases Advertising campaigns Trade shows
Newspaper articles Promotions Sales force meetings
Analysts reports Tenders Seminars / conferences
Regulatory reports Patent applications Recruiting ex-employees
Government reports Discussion with shared distributors
Presentations / speeches Social contacts with competitors

In his excellent book [Even More Offensive Marketing], Davidson likens the process of
gathering competitive data to a jigsaw puzzle. Each individual piece of data does not
have much value. The important skill is to collect as many of the pieces as possible and to
assemble them into an overall picture of the competitor. This enables you to identify any
missing pieces and to take the necessary steps to collect them.

What businesses need to know about their competitors

The tables below lists the kinds of competitor information that would help businesses
complete some good quality competitor analysis.

can probably think of many more pieces of information about a competitor that would be
useful. However, an important challenge in competitor analysis is working out how to
obtain competitor information that is reliable, up-to-date and available legally(!).

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What businesses probably already know their competitors
Overall sales and profits
Sales and profits by market
Sales by main brand
Cost structure
Market shares (revenues and volumes)
Organization structure
Distribution system
Identity / profile of senior management
Advertising strategy and spending
Customer / consumer profile & attitudes
Customer retention levels
What businesses would really like to know about competitors
Sales and profits by product
Relative costs
Customer satisfaction and service levels
Customer retention levels
Distribution costs
New product strategies
Size and quality of customer databases
Advertising effectiveness
Future investment strategy
Contractual terms with key suppliers
Terms of strategic partnerships

Consumerism

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"Consumerism has been a topic of interest for a number of years. Many researchers
believe that consumerism is a negative thing. These critics usually link the rise of
consumerism to advertising. However, there are some critics that argue that consumerism
and advertising have little to do with each other.

In 'The Efficient Society' Joseph Heath's theory is that consumerism and advertising are
not intimately connected. In fact, Heath's argument suggests that competition and social
status are the driving force behind the increase in consumerism. For example, Heath
states, 'Thus comparative consumption can easily become competitive consumption'."

Consumer Buying Behavior

Buying Behavior is the decision processes and acts of people involved in buying and
using products.

Need to understand:

• why consumers make the purchases that they make?

• what factors influence consumer purchases?
• the changing factors in our society.

Consumer Buying Behavior refers to the buying behavior of the ultimate consumer. A
firm needs to analyze buying behavior for:

• Buyers reactions to a firms marketing strategy has a great impact on the firms
success.
• The marketing concept stresses that a firm should create a Marketing Mix (MM)
that satisfies (gives utility to) customers, therefore need to analyze the what,
where, when and how consumers buy.
• Marketers can better predict how consumers will respond to marketing strategies.

Stages of the Consumer Buying Process

Six Stages to the Consumer Buying Decision Process (For complex decisions). Actual
purchasing is only one stage of the process. Not all decision processes lead to a purchase.
All consumer decisions do not always include all 6 stages, determined by the degree of
complexity...discussed next.

The 6 stages are:

1. Problem Recognition(awareness of need)--difference between the desired state

and the actual condition. Deficit in assortment of products. Hunger--Food. Hunger
stimulates your need to eat.
Can be stimulated by the marketer through product information--did not know
you were deficient? I.E., see a commercial for a new pair of shoes, stimulates
your recognition that you need a new pair of shoes.

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 2. Information search--
o Internal search, memory.
o External search if you need more information. Friends and relatives (word
of mouth). Marketer dominated sources; comparison shopping; public
sources etc.

A successful information search leaves a buyer with possible alternatives, the

evoked set.

Hungry, want to go out and eat, evoked set is

o chinese food
o indian food
o burger king
o Klondike kates etc
3. Evaluation of Alternatives--need to establish criteria for evaluation, features the
buyer wants or does not want. Rank/weight alternatives or resume search. May
decide that you want to eat something spicy, indian gets highest rank etc.
If not satisfied with your choice then return to the search phase. Can you think of
another restaurant? Look in the yellow pages etc. Information from different
sources may be treated differently. Marketers try to influence by "framing"
alternatives.
4. Purchase decision--Choose buying alternative, includes product, package, store,
method of purchase etc.
5. Purchase--May differ from decision, time lapse between 4 & 5, product
availability.
6. Post-Purchase Evaluation--outcome: Satisfaction or Dissatisfaction. Cognitive
Dissonance, have you made the right decision. This can be reduced by warranties,
after sales communication etc.
After eating an indian meal, may think that really you wanted a chinese meal
instead.

Consumer Oriented Marketing

Marketing activities were constructed to simply promote product sales and focus on
building market share; strategies that focused on how companies could move the most
units of merchandise were considered the right way to go. In today's competitive business
environment however, marketing activities are constructed to fulfill the needs of
consumers.

Consumer-oriented marketing strategies give the marketing manager the tools required to
examine which stores/distribution channels should carry the product.
the price-sensitivity of the product or brand, and which segments of the population are
the purchasers of the product.

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Therefore, for an organization to take on a consumer oriented approach, it will have to
ask the following questions:

1. How is the market segmented? For instance, are the primary consumers brand
loyalists, cost-conscious, or conspicuous consumers looking to purchase luxury
items for status?

2. What is the profitability of each of these segments? Once the segmentation of the
market is known, the organization should then determine the size and profitability
of each of these segments. The potential for large, underserved segments of the
population to exist is there and organizations that have clearly identified these
potentially profitable segments can find great success.

3. What are the common characteristics of the consumers in each segment? Now that
the company has defined the segments and the profitability of each one, the
marketing management must then look at the characteristics, habits, values, and
influencing factors of these potential customers. By doing so, the managers can
better predict whether the segment is more likely to grow or to shrink in the
future. This will undoubtedly have an impact on future campaigns and marketing
strategies

A final point worth mentioning is that marketing management should also ask
themselves if the existing customers are actually satisfied with the current products
and services offered by the organization. Ideally, this is done after the market
segmentation has taken place; this way the organization can better tailor its offerings
to the needs of specific customers.

By determining who the customers are and customizing and tailoring their offerings
to these customers, marketing managers can benefit by: a) fulfilling the needs of
underserved consumers; and b) creating long-term value and growth opportunities for
their respective organizations.

Customer Relationship Management

Customer relationship management is a broadly recognized, widely-implemented strategy
for managing and nurturing a company’s interactions with customers and sales prospects.
It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes—
principally sales related activities, but also those for marketing, customer service, and
technical support. The overall goals are to find, attract, and win new customers, nurture
and retain those the company already has, entice former customers back into the fold, and
reduce the costs of marketing and customer service.

According to Forrester Research, spending on customer relationship management is

expected to top $11 billion annually by 2010, as enterprises seek to grow top-line
revenues, improve the customer experience, and boost the productivity of customer-
facing staff.

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Once simply a label for a category of software tools, customer relationship management
has matured and broadened as a concept over the years; today, it generally denotes a
company-wide business strategy embracing all customer-facing departments and even
beyond. When an implementation is effective, people, processes, and technology work in
synergy to develop and strengthen relationships, increase profitability, and reduce
operational costs.

Benefits

Customer relationship management tools have been shown to help companies attain these
objectives:

• Streamlined sales and marketing processes

• Higher sales productivity
• Added cross-selling and up-selling opportunities
• Improved customer service, loyalty, and retention
• Increased call center efficiency
• Higher close rates
• Better customer profiling and targeting
• Reduced expenses
• Increased market share
• Higher overall profitability
• Marginal costing

Challenges

Tools and workflows can be complex to implement, especially for large enterprises.
While some companies report great success, initiatives have also been known to fail—
mainly owing to poor planning, a mismatch between software tools and company needs,
roadblocks to collaboration between departments, and a lack of workforce buy-in and
adoption.

Previously these tools were generally limited to contact management: monitoring and
recording interactions and communications with customers. Software solutions then
expanded to embrace deal tracking and the management of accounts, territories,
opportunities, and—at the managerial level—the sales pipeline itself. Next came the
advent of tools for other customer-facing business functions, as described below.

Customer relationship management technology has been, and still is, offered as on-
premises software that companies purchase and run on their own IT infrastructure.

Perhaps the most notable trend has been the growth of tools delivered via the Web, also
known as cloud computing and software as a service (SaaS). In contrast with
conventional on-premises software, cloud-computing applications are sold by
subscription, accessed via a secure Internet connection, and displayed on a Web browser.
Companies don’t incur the initial capital expense of purchasing software; neither must

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they buy and maintain IT hardware to run it on. In 2009, SaaS represented approximately
20% of all customer relationship management spending, and continues its trajectory of
outselling on-premises software by a ratio of 3-to-1.

Click Only Companies

Click marketing company, will manage PPC(Pay Per click) advertising to achieve the
best return on investment. search engine marketing specialists will meticulously manage
campaigns down to the keyword level to minimize spending on wasted clicks. Want to
make sure only prospects click on ads. process will ensure that we'll develop, implement
and manage a pay per click strategy that will lead to success.

Keyword Research

Once worked with to identify the goals of PPC Advertising, will conduct in-depth
keyword research. This is one of the most essential tasks of a pay per click campaign, as
the keywords or keyword categories select will define who sees advertisements and
where in the buying or hiring process they are. need to identify the terms relating to
product or service that are being searched and who is searching them.

Competitive Analysis

Following the selection of the keywords and keyword categories, Advance Design
Interactive search engine marketing specialists will conduct a competitive analysis. It's
important to know who on the starting block with, how aggressively they are vying for
top positions and of course, what those top positions cost in order to determine an overall
pay per click strategy and budget.

Ad Copywriting & Landing Page Design and Development

Once the keywords and budget are set, Our SEM Specialists will write strategic ad copy
for PPC Ads. Ad text needs to be written by a writer with good communication skills and
the ability to both grab a viewer's attention and impart important information within the
character limit commonly imposed by many of the top search engines. We will then map
these ads to goal-specific landing pages which will strengthen call-to-action and not
leave the web site visitor directionless.

Daily Pay Per Click Management

Following the set-up of the PPC campaign, Advance Design Interactive experienced
search engine marketing specialists will manage pay per click advertising campaigns to
ensure you get the best possible ROI by constantly testing new ad copy, landing page

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copy, and keyword selection. pay per click management services include daily
monitoring of program's statistics to be sure getting the results we expect and to ensure
figures sync with the results provided from the search engines.

Effective PPC campaigns are the result of hard work done by expert search engine
marketers, and experts are the result of experience. The sort of experience that comes
from trial and error, from keeping one's ear to the ground when the search engines are
rumbling, from sharing experience with others, from testing and comparing, from
developing intuition, and from doing it every day.

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