Warfare Strategy Basics
By David Golding
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Ries and Trout in their bestselling marketing book of the 1980s, Marketing Warfare, mentioned some marketing warfare strategies that today are largely forgotten, especially among small businesses and definitely among websites. To adequately wage war on the internet, you must remember that you will inevitably fall into one of four categories and will have to adjust your marketing strategy accordingly.
Defensive Strategy—OUT
The only one who should use any level of defensive strategy is the market leader, and the leader only. All too often, folks read from some guy’s blog about an effective marketing technique on the web, and they try to use it only to discover that in their case it doesn’t work. (Well, I’ve seen more of this scenario: they beat a dead rat over and over again trying to get it to work, but it’s futile.) Yes, that technique has the power to work, but there are so many other lurking variables that can influence how well it will work for you, like brand leverage, exposure, capital, and offline promotions. You simply don’t have all the power and resources the leader has, or you would be the leader. So leave out defensive strategy. You have nothing big enough to defend if you’re not the leader. But you do have everything to go out there and take.
Offensive Strategy—OUT
Disregard offensive tactics too. I know what you’re thinking: if I don’t use defensive marketing strategies, and I don’t use offensive strategies, what else is out there? Or, you’re likely thinking that I’m a blundering marketing fool. Well, the fact of the matter is this: where there is a number one, there is a number two, and the odds are that you are not the number two. Just like defensive strategy should be left to the leader, offensive strategy should be left to anyone with enough market share to do damage to the leader. And since you are not that guy, I’m guessing, you ought not waste your resources fighting for share that will probably be taken by the no. 2 or no. 3 contenders. There are other strategies for you, but this one just isn’t it. For example, don’t build a search engine. That’s a dumb idea at this point. You don’t have the power to take any share from Google or Yahoo! or even Ask for that matter. It’s just not going to be worth it.
Flanking Strategy—IN (maybe)
OK, now we’re starting to get into the possibilities that can make a difference for your site. When building a marketing campaign, you have to examine your offering. Is it like everyone else? Does it have any unique selling position? Most of the time when folks attempt a flank move, they blunder it to shreds. Recall how many successful flanks exist in military war history… Not that many. This is an incredibly difficult tactic, so you may not want to get all your resources focused on it. But nothing can be quite so satisfactory as flanking out the big guys and watching them squirm.
To give you an idea of possibly the greatest flanking move of all time, take a look at the Apple iPod phenomenon. Apple had been in the dredges of the business world and all but months away from calling it quits when they brought Steve Jobs back on board. He was able to build them back to a level of profitability, but still they had little market share and were clinging on to their old loyalists, not gaining many new ones. Their competition had them beat, in terms of market share, and to gain on any of them would be next to impossible (within the next 5 years, let alone next quarter). Even today, old notions still exist in the minds of the consumers. Many people still believe that Macs are more expensive (they actually aren’t; they’ve beaten Dell for over a year straight in pricing) or that they’re incompatible (they now support both Mac OS and Windows and Linux and Unix… without emulation… who can beat that?). They employed perfectly the flanking move.
In 2001, they crafted the first generation iPod, an MP3 player designed for high-end use. It was the first of its kind with substantial storage capacity that no other players had. When other players caught up, their pricing just wan’t competitive enough. At the time Microsoft wasn’t scared (“Oh, it’s an MP3 player, not a computer”) and other computer manufacterers thought not much of it. But coupled with the whole iTunes Music Store concept, Apple singlehandedly invented a whole new market: they flanked out all their competitors.
Right now their iPod is the undisputed champion of personal media players, as people now call them, and their market share in the computer world? More than 10% higher than before 2001. Their stock continues a steady incline and now they can bask in the benefits of the halo effect.
When putting together a flanking strategy, realize you have to offer something analogous to your current offering, but significantly innovative. When this is a serious difficulty, flanking should be out with the rest.
For the masses: Guerilla Warfare
If you’re the number 10 guy but don’t have the ingenuity to bust out an Apple iPod in your field, then you’re like the 99% of every market. You are guerilla warriors who must fight a war based on a whole set of different principles.
I hate it when people call this “niche marketing.” It makes it sound like you’re looking for a niche out there. No, you’re looking for an uncontested area of the market. A niche is too narrow in my mind. It can be too easily duplicated. But finding an uncontested area means that you are able to sustain demand for a needed product or service that not anyone can just come in and reproduce.
Principle number one for all your guerilla warriors out there: find an uncontested area, not a niche. Finding a niche goes something like this: “Oh, I’ve noticed that there’s no website out there for selling dog food online. I’m going to sell dog food and be the only one that does that. What a good niche!” Yeah, someone tried that and Pets Mart started doing the same thing and the fight was over real quick. An uncontested area of the market is more like this: “Hey, I’ve noticed the power of social networking, like MySpace and Friendster and LinkedIn. I’m going to build a social networking site for an uncontested area: college students. Yeah, I’ll call it Facebook.” In case you haven’t heard, Facebook is going to sell for somewhere in the vacinity of $900 million. Not bad for 2 years’ worth of work. That’s taking a guerilla strategy to the max. Try to emulate the same thing. The demand was already there on the web, but it was uncontested. In the dog food example, Pets Mart already had a presence on the net and offered dog food already, just without huge emphasis. In the Facebook example, college students were already doing social networking on dating websites and other venues, but no one claimed a site that grabbed just them. The demand was there, but there was no one to deliver. MySpace did, but it was too tacky, and they were trying to be everything for everybody, just like Friendster. So it was a perfect exploitation of an uncontested area.
Principle number two: be nimble. When Facebook started seeing the same concepts being borrowed on other sites like MySpace and Friendster, they worked quickly to gain audiences by personally campaigning on college campuses. They were quick enough to hedge up against the risk and so effectively kept out “MySpace For Colleges” from ever looking all that cool. Some folks recommend that when they come in to take your slice of the pie, give it to them and go find another slice. Well, I for one don’t ever believe in letting another team just waltz in and score a touchdown for free, let alone grabbing chunks of market share for nothing. Give them all the trouble you can. “Go to the mattresses,” like the Godfather says. But be nimble and ready to adapt. Yahoo! and Prodigy have learned all-too-terribly about being rigid in their planning and execution, only to see Google and AOL come in and take up as much market share as they like.
If you apply these warfare stragies to your marketing plans, you’ll be way ahead of most. (They’re still thinking that pleasing the consumer is all you have to do! That’s so 20th century!)
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