Big ideas can overcome big budgets.
Smaller companies face an uphill battle when competing against industry leaders that have decades of brand recognition and much larger advertising budgets. Simply getting a consumer to try an unfamiliar good or service can require an enormous amount of effort.
Rather than trying to outspend their larger competitors, smaller brands often have to find ways to outmaneuver them.
In a presentation hosted on Ragan Training, Elizabeth Paul, chief brand officer at The Martin Agency, and Eric Jagher, the former chief marketing officer of UScellular, share four tips on how challenger brands can go head-to-head with larger rivals by embracing a mixture of creativity and courage.
- Select a counter-culture position: Do something unexpected. People will stop and pay attention. There’s power in swimming upstream. That doesn’t, however, mean being different just for the sake of being different. It means addressing an overlooked need or confronting a problem others choose to ignore. It’s about establishing a distinctive point of view.
- Engineer engagement at every turn: Use PR and social media to amplify the message. Spark conversations. If the idea is interesting, it will spread. But it needs an initial push to start building its own momentum.
- Create irrational loyalty: If a startup can’t offer consumers the lowest prices, it will need to provide more incentives for customers to come back. This is where emotional connection comes into play. Give them a purpose or community or sense of identity that rises above pure logic.
- Stay the course: In most cases, success won’t arrive overnight. Give it time. A consistent drumbeat will eventually get heard. Building awareness and changing consumer perceptions often takes years.
Watch the full session, “Outthink, Don’t Outspend: How Challenger Brands Win with Earned Media and Social Strategy,” on Ragan Training.
The post 4 ways challenger brands can outsmart industry leaders appeared first on PR Daily.
