Where to attack

Companies waste so many resources attacking their competitors and never seem to get anywhere. Your research will give you a nice long list of your competitors weaknesses, and that's all you need right? WRONG! Small incremental amounts of market share can be stolen by targeting your competitors weaknesses but that gain is often not worth the cost.

More often than not, a company's weakness exists because the market doesn't care. This isn't always true, but most weaknesses exist because that aspect of the service ranks far down on the customers list of requirements.

The best form of attack is to attack the weakness that is inherent in your competitors biggest strength. Identify their best strengths and find the weaknesses within those strengths. If they are a massive company, they aren't likely to be agile. If they have massive overheads then they are less likely to be able to compete on price. It may take some time, but when you see it you will know how to exploit it.

*In the cola wars, Pepsi was number 2 by a mile and then some. Coke had invested millions in creating the brand around the iconic glass coke bottle, and when they invested heavily in a bottle factory to create the bottles, Pepsi struck. Pepsi knew that the bottle was Coke's biggest brand asset, but the inherent weakness was that Coke had to stick with it until they had realised the investment in the factory.

Pepsi hit the market hard with plastic bottles with double the volume of cola at the same price at a Coke bottle. Coke were powerless to react and Pepsi scooped up massive amounts of market share. That moment put Pepsi on the map, and the 2 have been battling it out ever since.

*from the book "Marketing Warfare" by Jack Ries & Al Trout