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1-Page Summary of Marketing Warfare
Customer or the Competition?
What’s more important: pleasing the customer or beating your competition? The correct answer is to beat the competition. That way, you can succeed in business. With mass media becoming popular after World War II, companies started thinking about their customers and how they could please them. Because of this focus on the customer, today all companies use similar tactics to try to capture them as customers.
To succeed in business today, companies should focus on their competitors. They should study them and find ways to beat them. This is the way the world works now.
The Harsh Realities of the Battlefield
There are a lot of myths that stem from the current customer-oriented outlook. One is that the better product will win out in the marketplace. “Truth will out,” marketers say, but it doesn’t work because reality is expensive to change and consumers’ misconceptions aren’t going to go away. It’s more effective to wage your marketing battle based on those terms instead of trying to fight them with facts alone.
The Superiority of Defense
The lesson of von Clausewitz is that if you can defend yourself, you’ll be more successful than your opponent. To attack someone else, you need to bring overwhelming force against them while they just need to maintain a defense. A survey of twenty-five brands from 1923 shows that four are still the most popular today out of five who have dropped in popularity. Those four did well because they defended themselves and repelled attacks by competitors over time.
The Four Modes of Marketing Warfare
There are four ways to approach the marketing battlefield. General Motors dominates with about fifty-nine percent of the market, and they don’t want to lose that share. If they wipe out one of their competitors, then regulators would be upset because GM is a monopoly. A defensive strategy can be proactive in this case.
Ford is a strong number two company in the United States. They should use an offensive strategy against General Motors because they have the resources to attack and GM has more vulnerable points that can be attacked.
Chrysler is in third place, with 13% of the market. They should take a different approach to compete against Ford and GM. Chrysler introduced the first minivan and convertible as indirect attacks on Ford and GM’s flank.
American Motors must find a way to survive with its limited resources. It should use guerrilla tactics, meaning it should look for opportunities and then run away from the competition. Its Jeep product is a niche that’s too narrow for competitors to bother with at this time.
Defensive Marketing
Defensive Marketing Warfare
In order to play defense, you must be the market leader. If you’re not and try to fend off competition anyway, you won’t ever increase your market share. You should use a different strategy that’s better suited for defending against competitors.
If you were your own worst enemy, what would you do? You might introduce new products to replace the old ones so that no one else can compete with you.
It’s important to block strong competitive moves. You should also pay attention to what your competitors are doing and be ready for any new products they might introduce. Even if you disagree with their strategy, you need to adapt and change with the times.
Like a race car driver, you must block the opponent that tries to pass you. You need to be prepared for any action your opponents might take against you. If they cut the price of one of their products, consider how best to respond (similarly as a racer would). Since they are leading in this area, regulators will watch closely what actions your company takes however so keep that in mind when deciding on your actions.
