Is Trashing Your Competition in Marketing Garbage?
Oh, how tempting it can be! Your product or service is better, cheaper, or faster (maybe all three!) than your competitor’s offering. You’re David and they’re Goliath. They have a ton of brand recognition and are the behemoth in the category.
You? Not so much, and after the big guys, there’s a lot of clutter and a lack of differentiation.
To drive traffic to your Unbounce landing page, you bid on their brand name and cost, because you know a heck of a lot folks want to know how much they have to pay for your competitor’s product. For a pretty penny you drive traffic to your LP, and then what? Here's what happened at my last shop.
Our creative director wanted to go spicy, and stick it to the competition. The content wasn’t quite, “here’s why they’re garbage,” but the negative sentiment definitely came across. My approach was to highlight the key areas where we were better than the competition (and the consumer cared about!), in a more positive tone.
We ran an A/B test.Which approach was more effective? I think the title of this post gave it away. It was pretty conclusive that fewer form completes came from the more spicy (i.e., negative) content all other things equal. All our LPs were then updated with the winning content.
Of course, this is just one test, and there may be the case when going hard on the competition is more effective in lead capture. Ironic adverts that poke fun at the competition can be fun, but they may backfire too. Does your competition really need more impressions paid for on your dime? What do you think?
