Your client has strengths and weaknesses. Your client’s competitors do also. No business is perfect. One of your first acts as a marketer should be to analyze the competition for weaknesses. What are the competitors saying in their marketing? Where are they placing their emphasis? Are they using a slogan that states their position? What is their reputation in the marketplace?
The competition’s point of concentration can be a strength for them, but that position can also be a weakness which your client can exploit and sell against.
If they advertise the lowest price, your client can offer additional services at no charge, or a special expertise. A series of stories demonstrating them can be a campaign approach for your client.
If the competition touts their extensive services, your client might offer no-frills products, savings for customers who will do their own delivery, or who expect less luxury. Motel 6 is a good example of an advertiser who takes this approach.
If the competition is proud of their convenient location, your client might be willing to come to the customers’ homes or workplace, or to pay them for the time and fuel to visit. Or…make what your client offers so unique and enticing, that the inconvenient location (which you emphasize in their marketing) is worth the reward of shopping at your client.
If a competitor offers a huge selection, maybe your advertiser talks about the fact that they’ve narrowed down the choices to the very best items, or that they specialize in a few unique, rare, or exclusive one of a kind items.
A competitor which emphasizes their rich heritage and decades of experience, can be sold against if your client is new, young, cool, and willing to do or offer things their old, dated, stodgy competition isn’t.
You can even do this analysis of your client’s customers. For example, one strength consumers have is the ability to shop online, obtain advice, compare prices, items, and services. The weakness they have is time. Your client has done the research, and may offer a comparison chart, or other ways to help, both in-store and online, and can save customers search time.
That gift of time can be the best bonus your client can offer. We used that very phrase for a high-end auto dealer with great success.
I think you get the idea. Every seeming strength can be seen as a weakness and a marketing opportunity for your client.
You are the marketer who did more than just put together a schedule or brought your client’s script ideas to life. You dug deep and uncovered real advantages for them that may just change the course of their business.
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