“When it rains, it pours.” We’ve all heard that before. It describes why people in relationships magically seem to get hit on more often.
We all know it’s just a confidence thing. When you’re confident, you exude it in everything you do, and people around you tend to want to be around you. When you’re unconfident, it’s difficult to get people to follow you into friendships, relationships, and business.
Easy to see how this is true for individuals: Donald Trump didn’t get where he is by having low regard for himself. But what about brands? What about the “collective self-esteem” of an organization? As Peter Drucker once said, “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” If that culture gazes at its shoes a lot…ruh-roh.
Your company’s confidence is perceived in the minds of your audience in the clarity and consistency of your product and vision.
Pretend you’re that email security company I made up in an earlier post: You get funding, and you describe yourself as “the technology that makes it safe to send email again.” You get some great market traction, start generating sales, and then you see competitors follow you. Whoa. You’ve just started a movement to make it safe to send email again!
The next move I see far too many companies make is to begin to look in the rear view mirror. They see their competitors doing things and apply what I’ll call a reverse confirmation bias toward their competitors’ tactics and strategies. The fear of “maybe they’re doing it right” quickly becomes “why aren’t we doing that?” They build up a confidence debt.
A market leader that spends too much time reacting to what competitors are doing will not be the leader for very long.
The more you react, the less you’re able to act. The less you’re able to do the kind of blank-slate things that redefine the market you’re playing in. The less you take a step back and see your company and product through the eyes of your customers. And the more your customers see your brand as ever-changing and unstable.
It’s not easy, I get it. Mark Suster hit it on the head with his post about how startups are all “naked in the mirror.” And your competition might be right. But that stuff takes time to evolve, and you’ll never know if they have it all figured out based on what you see in your rear view mirror right now. You’ll never see that from a press release.
One of the hardest things about marketing is being able to differentiate between competitive intelligence that’s helpful, and that which is distracting. Openness and transparency about the things your competitors are doing right is critical. But keep yourself true to the vision you set forth, and make sure you’re devoting far more resources to chasing that vision than chasing your competitors. Then your brand gets laid.
Summary:
- Customers can perceive how confident your company is – when you’re consistent in your vision and message, you can earn the right positioning among your customers. They’ll in turn feel confident buying you. This means revenue.
- Time spent following competitors is time lost following your vision. Acknowledge their strengths but stay true to yours.
- Never judge the success or failure of a competitor’s strategy or tactics by a press release or self-reported metric. Look at its impact on the market. Understand this sometimes takes a while. Listen to your customers, listen to your market.
