Insights for Leaders Navigating
Visibility, Credibility, and Growth.
From media strategy to reputation management, we explore the trends shaping public perception and share the approaches that drive measurable results for growing brands.
Differentiating your company and its products and services from the competition can be critical to the success of your business. Consider wireless service providers. AT&T Wireless, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint work hard to differentiate their service based on price, network coverage and their selection of phones.
As you work to thoroughly analyze your competitors’ product and key messages, and develop effective positioning, consider these five tips:
- Know Your Competitor’s Product. Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein recently found himself in a pickle when he divulged to Kara Swisher of All Things Digital that he had never used an iPhone, the largest competitor to the Palm Pre. Rubinstein commented, “We don’t pay that much attention to Apple – I know it sounds really strange. I don’t have an iPhone. I’ve never even used one.” One of the key elements to differentiating your products and services from the competitor is to have a firm understanding of the key features and functionalities of your competitor’s offerings.
- Understand Your Competitor’s Claims. This will enable you to analyze your company’s key messages and vision, and develop messaging that demonstrates how your products and services differ from competitive solutions on the market.
- Determine Your Key Points of Differentiation. Next, begin to craft effective messages that will resonate with your key audiences. These points of differentiation could include cost, quality, performance, technology, leadership, service or customer support. Whenever possible, include supporting data points to help reinforce these points of differentiation.
- Be Realistic. It’s important to be realistic in understanding how your company stacks up to its competitors. Otherwise, you’re doing your company a disservice and potentially making claims about your product or service that are misleading or simply aren’t true. Having a realistic outlook on your product/services’ strengths and weaknesses will enable you to set achievable expectations and goals for the future.
- Test Your Positioning with Third Party Influencers. Once you have your competitive messaging in place, test it with a third-party influencer to ensure it resonates with potential audiences and validates your company’s messages, market strategy and overall product and service outlook.
Having a thorough understanding of your competitors’ messages and products will enable your company to develop clear and concise messages and effectively differentiate your company from others in the market. Ultimately, this will help you take market share from competitors and relay a unified image to customers, investors and business partners.
To learn more about distinguishing yourself from competitors, send us an e-mail at info@communiquepr.com.
The e-book market is hot and there’s a pricing war on the horizon. The wild popularity of the Amazon Kindle, Barnes and Noble’s recent launch of its e-book reader Nook, and talk of Apple joining the game with its Tablet service has caused the publishing industry to take a closer look at pricing strategies for e-books in an effort to maximize sales of both hardcover books and e-books.
Communiqué PR’s client, Digonex, a provider of real-time pricing solutions recently offered its perspective on the e-book pricing war in a recent guest column in Publisher’s Weekly. Digonex’s CEO Jan Eglen and economic consultant Rafi Mohammed argue that while the publishing industry has cause for concern over the pricing of e-books, dynamic pricing technology provides a viable strategy for publishers to effectively navigate these new waters and continue to maximize revenue opportunities.
Eglen and Mohammed state, “The publishing industry is right to be concerned over $9.99 price tags for bestselling e-books. One price has the potential to disrupt the current publishing model, as well as change how books are marketed and priced in the future. The good news is that pricing techniques can be used to effectively manage this transition.”
The bottom line is it’s impossible to set one price on a vast catalogue of products such as e-books that is right for all. According to Eglen and Mohammed, “as the marketplace has learned through iTunes, all music isn’t worth the same price, and all e-books aren’t worth $9.99.” A dynamic pricing strategy can give publishers the flexibility to price e-books based on consumer demand to maximize revenue opportunities.
Apple’s entry into the e-book market could be a major game changer leading to a publisher-driven selling platform that would allow publishers to take back the pricing power that Amazon currently holds. One thing is clear, the e-book pricing war is just heating up and I anticipate we’ll be hearing the roars get louder in the coming months.
We recently worked with GKD on a redesign of our firm’s Web site. The process was extremely valuable as it provided an opportunity for us to re-evaluate our firm’s positioning, our brand attributes and the value we deliver clients. I found it inspiring and motivating to focus on the future vision of our business and how we would like to see our business develop in the coming years.
Our goals with the redesign of our site were to ensure we accurately positioned our business, updated the look and feel, made sure our book and blog were better integrated, and made sure we had an easy way to update information. We also wanted better integration with social media platforms – after all, six years ago when our original site was developed Twitter wasn’t even in existence.
Allocating resources for a Web site redesign in this economic climate is not an easy task; however, a dated site can do more damage than good. A company’s Web site often creates a first impression with a prospective customer, partner, investor or employee.
As you evaluate your Web site, you may want to ask yourself the following questions:
- Does your current site make the best impression?
- Is it accurately communicating the right messages about your organization?
- Is the site easy to navigate?
The reality is businesses evolve, new products are developed, messages shift, technology changes – and all of this impacts a company’s Web site. Many times these changes happen incrementally, but before long a Web site that was an accurate representation of your company and its messages may look dated, be off target and confuse potential business partners.
I would encourage you to evaluate your current site on a regular basis to determine if the messages are accurate and current, it is easy for visitors to find information and the company’s current brand is accurately represented.
Last week I attended the 2010 Ticket Summit in New York with Communiqué PR client Digonex. Targeted toward the secondary market (i.e. ticket brokers) this year’s Ticket Summit brought together more than 500 experts from across various parts of the industry to discuss today’s ticketing challenges.
Harry Sandler, director of strategic ticketing for Digonex, spoke to a standing room only audience on a panel entitled, “How to Price Your Tickets.” In attendance were not only ticket brokers, but ticket operations directors from a variety of sports franchises and venues who are looking to begin experimenting with dynamic pricing technology to help their organizations maximize revenue opportunities while keeping fans in the seats.
Dynamic pricing continues to be a hot topic among the ticketing industry as these organizations evaluate alternative pricing structures to combat the challenging economic climate, declining event attendance and increased competition for the entertainment dollar. After hearing several panel discussions, one thing is clear: 2010 could see significant changes in the ticketing industry.
In addition to speaking at the conference, Digonex met with several trade and national sports business reporters including Associated Press, The Deal Reporter, Sports Business Journal, Venues Today and Ticket News TV. This was a great opportunity for Digonex executives to foster relationships with key reporters and provide their perspective on why dynamic pricing technology provides a fair-for-all solution for primary ticketing organizations, ticket brokers and consumers.
“I don’t have time.” This is a common statement I hear from executives when speaking with them about social media. While I appreciate senior managers are busy, I believe it is essential they make time to use this powerful medium. Otherwise, they will not have a good grasp of this new technology and how it is impacting communication and disrupting traditional forms of marketing.
Jennifer and I wrote about this subject in a recent article published in the January 2010 issue of Seattle Business magazine called, “The Social Media Blind Spot.” In the article, we encourage executives to sign up for and use social media. We share examples of how Seattle-area businesses and non-profits are using Twitter and Facebook, and provide some simple tips on how execs can get started.
Once executives have had a first-hand experience engaging via social networks, they will be better equipped to evaluate the potential benefits of social media to their organizations. For more ideas on how to use social media to achieve your business objectives, please feel free to contact me.
As you may remember, in October the Communiqué PR team read “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success” and discussed how we could apply the principles outlined in the book in both our private and professional lives. We are currently reading the book, “Just Listen” by Mark Goulston.
“Just Listen” provides eye-opening insights and practical tips for learning how to effectively reach people in virtually every scenario — defiant executives, angry employees, family members and others. Mark Goulston M.D., veteran psychiatrist and business coach, discusses how to get difficult people to do what you want in tough situations.
As PR professionals, we are often required to reach out to and connect with a variety of people — editors, analysts, bloggers, clients, vendors and venture capitalists to name a few. The premise of Dr. Goulston’s book is that by listening and acknowledging another person’s point of view you will be much more successful in achieving your goals.
Whether it’s counseling clients on a particular strategy to help propel their business forward, or sparking a journalist’s interest in a compelling story idea, it’s easy to get caught up with our own needs and forget to listen. This book provides practical tips and guidance on how to rewire ourselves to be able to truly listen to those around us in order to provide the best PR services possible. We have put his suggestions to work and seen some amazing results.
Dr. Goulston not only provides perspective on how to make people listen to us, he also discusses the following:
- Taking control of a stressful situation
- Steering clear of toxic people
- The power of saying thank you and apologizing
- Gaining trust and establishing relationships with the gatekeepers
Whether you’re a PR professional reaching out to a journalist, a CEO obtaining buy-in from board members, or a manager dealing with hostile employees, “Just Listen” provides a blueprint for connecting with the hardest to reach people and turning them into allies. We highly recommend this book to anyone who is looking to improve his or her communication and listening skills with business associates, friends or family.