How To Hit The Competition Without Losing The Customer

Get over it! If you run any type of business, you're going to
have competitors.

Even if your product or service is a unique one, soon you'll have
copycat products start surfacing. Competition is therefore just
a fact of business life and one of the 'virtues' of living in a
capitalistic society.

Now that you are over it, let's examine some ways in which you
can hit your competition without marginalizing your prospects.
Your choices are about the same as a politician's with regard to
beating his or her opponent.

So you can:

1. Drag your competitor's name through the mud.

You can try and discourage your prospect from dealing with your
competition by slandering their name and claiming their products
to be inferior. Only problem is that in the majority such cases
this has the opposite effect and brings more attention to your
rival in business. What happens is that people who knew nothing
about your competitor now go to investigate for themselves the
validity of your claims.

I'm sure you've seen this phenomenon where unknown books are
banned, only to make unto the bestsellers list.

This approach can also backfire since you'll appear as a jealous
and vindictive business owner. Your arguments will appear more
driven by feelings rather than hard facts. This is therefore
not the best approach to take.

2. Making a recommendation with a major reservation.

This strategy is a little more ethical than the first but not
anymore rewarding. In this case you make a recommendation such
as: "You are welcome to buy your widgets from the XYZ company if
your construction is needed only for a few months, because
that's how long they last." Here you are really giving a
compliment and then undoing everything you said before. This may
be a neat psychological tactic but your business still appears
in a negative light.

3. Invite an apple-for-apple comparison.

When you invite your prospect to compare your product side by
side with that of your competition, you are showing confidence in
your product without putting your competition down. So you can
say: "I invite you to compare our vacuum cleaner to any leading
brand and see the results for yourself. We are sure that you'll
be pleased by the results that you get from our latest model."

The interesting thing about this approach is that most people
wouldn't bother to do the field test. Simply because you were
not afraid to acknowledge your competitor's product will instill
the confidence in your prospect to get your product. It will be
assumed that you already did the comparison and know the results
otherwise you wouldn't make such a claim. Even if someone did
make the comparison then you have a new testimonial to add to
your file.

There are several ways in which you can invite this comparison
without making a statement as I did above. You can use a table
that juxtaposes the features of your product against your
competitor's. Such tables can simplify the process of carrying
out a test and 'help' the prospect towards choosing your
product.

Another effective way is to quote credible sources such as
Consumer Report magazine. Such organizations are not supported
by advertisers and so their results carry real weight with the
consumer. There are other such third-party organization that are
considered neutral and their conclusions credible.

Outside of such organization you can point to reviews done by
users of your products where the reviews are not used as an
affiliate advertising tool. You are looking to erase all bias in
these comparisons.

You may also be wondering how to address the case where your
product is obviously inferior to that of your competitor's. In
such a situation, you simply admit your faults openly. There are
times when extra features can be a useless luxury. For some
people, a car is just a convenience to take them from point A to
point B. They may not need the luxuries of a Porsche or have
the money to pay for such an expensive vehicle.

So let's say you were selling an autoresponder script that is
definitely not as feature-rich as another script. You can state:
"If you are looking for high-end script capable of emailing to a
million-strong list and having all the fancy features that
you'll never even bother to use, then this script is NOT for you.
However, if you are looking for a small but rugged program that
will deliver your emails, without all the bells and whistles
(and accompanying high price) then the Maxemailer is for you."

Right away you see that you are showing the customer that your
script will do the main thing that a product like yours should
do, without having to invest a large amount of money in its
purchase. You are admitting that your script is lacking in many
features, but in the end these components may not be necessary
to get the job done.

In addition, by admitting to your products 'weak side' you build
instant credibility with the customer. Many marketers think
that they have to hype their products in order to get sales. But
many marketing tests have shown that if you admit to the
disadvantages of using your product, sales increase!

Here is how I hit the competition on my copywriting service
website:

"In fact, I insist that you make a side-by-side comparison of my
copywriting results with that of any other copywriter. Then
after doing a 'split test' (i.e. run my copy against theirs) you
can judge for yourself the selling power of my copy."

For an online business, your competitors are just one click away.
Challenge your website visitors to shop around and compare.
Most will not.

They'll buy from you instead!