HONESTLY NOW, IS GAINING SWITCHING REALLY YOUR CORE COMPETENCY?
To Switch, verb. Deciding to purchase a brand of product different from that previously or usually chosen; often temporary or situational—as when one brand offers a limited-time, low-price promotion.
To Convert, verb. Bringing over from one belief, view, or party to another—as in a “religious conversion”; typically more permanent in nature.
Regardless of industry, when you look at annual, brand marketing plans by far the most common marketing objective you see is to gain customers/consumers — or at least some of their use occasions — by switching from a competitor’s brand to the company’s brand. There are a number of reasons why this objective is so prevalent:
--Gaining a switch is considered to be the “low-hanging fruit” among behaviors; it is generally acknowledged to be much easier (and much less expensive) to switch a current category user or some of their use occasions than it is to bring a totally new user into the category for the first time;
--Senior Management almost always expects their marketers to gain share…by taking users or occasions from a key competitor (how else would one gain share anyway?);
--Even with technically parity performance, companies usually believe that their brand is the better choice in the category—and therefore most deserving of switching from competition.
But, truth be told, talk of gaining switching in most companies, by most marketing teams, is mostly just that: talk. The facts are these:
Gaining a bona-fide switch—as in one that lasts, versus an incidental, one-time “I’ll give your brand a try given your great offer”—is a lot harder to pull off than most will admit. There are many categories, orange juice for example, where two or three brands like Tropicana Pure Premium, Simply Orange, and Florida’s Natural are generally considered to be of equally high quality, week-in and week-out. A family may be mostly a Pure Premium user; but Florida’s Natural runs a hot feature price for a week or so, and there is no harm in taking it home instead. Technically speaking, this is switching. But when Pure Premium runs a similar offer the next week, users typically return to their usual brand.
While there is nothing wrong with gaining some temporary, promotional switching, the real money lies in converting. To our minds, and per the difference in “definition degree” above, brands that cite switching in their annual marketing plans ought to be aiming for converting customers or consumers instead. Going for the on-going stream of revenue that follows when one gives up on a competitor’s brand and in favor of ours. But you rarely hear marketers or the management make this definitional distinction, let alone actively pursue true converting.
Most companies don’t really have the mojo to go after converting in a way that might actually work. We’ve all heard the leading brand principle that it’s not a good idea to specifically call out relative weaknesses in a number two or three competitor: to do so not only gives them “free air time,” but pulls the lead brand down from “the high road.” Then, too, in highly regulated businesses such as pharmaceuticals, the aversion to any—even remote—litigation tends to dampen any notions of demonstrating superiority over a key competitor pretty quickly. In short, there are often a good many speed-brakes applied to a company’s initial intentions of getting a lot more “conversion-competitive.”
Gaining an incidental or time-limited switch (thanks to some innovation or extra promotion activity) is one thing; but gaining the more permanent conversion takes “muscle.” And by “muscle” we mean some truly compelling impetus or rationale to cause the dropping of one brand and the adopting of another. Clearly, a serious safety deficiency in a competitor might qualify as one such impetus. Or even better, back in the days when Crest took on the longstanding dominant U.S. toothpaste leader, Colgate, the Crest brand had proven rationale that was even beyond compelling. It had study after study that showed an 80% reduction in cavities (not merely 8% or 18%); and it added to that rationale an unprecedented endorsement by the American Dental Association. No wonder in a relatively short time the Crest Brand gained “Colgate converts” by the droves…and became America’s #1 toothpaste for a good many years.
As a corollary to the above, communications that expect to cause conversion need to have “teeth” (sorry for the pun).Said another way, when a brand team sets out to develop a true conversion campaign, regardless of the media to be used, each and every idea that is considered must be assessed for its “converting potential.” And this assessing involves asking, “Exactly how do we expect this idea to play out in driving conversion—and what, specifically, gives it the “teeth” do this?”
The net of all of these tells us that very few companies or marketing teams can arguably claim conversion (let alone switching) as one of their core competencies. Where does your brand or company stand? Here’s a simple checklist to give you a head-start in answering that question.
Switching/Converting Is More Likely to Be One of Your Core Competencies When…
____You have zeroed in on a well-defined target segment to win over
(and you and your management have committed to focus on this)
____You know from market research what unmet needs or competitors’
need-gaps exist with this segment
____Your brand has a compelling rationale to win over a majority of this
segment
____You have a data-based market tracking system in place to actually
read levels of temporary and permanent switching/conversion (not
simply measures of changes in market share)
____When your Legal & Regulatory groups say “We cannot do this,” you
use any and all creative resources to find ways that you can do it
____Similarly, your Legal & Regulatory teams actively take part in offering
“switching solutions”… rather than merely putting up roadblocks
____When developing all communications, you and your creative teams
spell out precisely how the communication ideas will incent conversion
Richard Czerniawski & Mike Maloney
Richard D. Czerniawski
430 Abbotsford Road
Kenilworth, IL 60043
847-256-8820
Fax: 847-256-8847 richardcz@bdn-intl.com
Michael W. Maloney
1506 West 13th Street, #17
Austin, TX 78703
512-236-0971
