Strategy 1 min read
You’re not competing with everyone.
Most marketers benchmark against the whole category. Buyers compare three options, and rarely the ones on your competitive analysis slide.
Early in my career, I was trying to position a new online MBA against the six hundred other schools that had one.
No geography, no boundaries — so I assumed we had to be either the best brand in the country or the cheapest. My VP of Enrollment corrected me.
Even online, he said, our competitive set is still the college down the street.
We didn’t have to beat Western Governors. We didn’t have to out-price Southern New Hampshire. We had to beat the handful of schools that showed up on the same applications ours did.
- 01Same few metro areas.
- 02Same tuition bracket.
- 03Same schools on every application.
- 04Same two names in every loss report.
There’s a grim joke about two men in the woods being chased by a bear. One sits down to lace his shoes. Are you crazy, says the other, you’ll never out-run a bear. I don’t have to, he says. I just have to out-run you.
Brands survive not because they’re the best, but because other brands die first.
Find out who you actually have to beat. It is almost always a shorter list, and a much more winnable fight.
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