I recently talked with an old friend a few weeks ago. The last time I talked with him was during the Christmas season in 2005. After a few minutes of catching up on old memories, the conversation turned to owning and operating a small business.
Since the time I talked with my friend in 2005, he and his wife started a small business. They have enjoyed very good success. He and his wife grew their business from zero to over $500,000 in gross sales since January 2006. The problem he is having is a direct competitor is copying his website and stealing his marketing ideas and campaigns.
According to my friend, his company and his direct competitor has a product overlap of approximately 50%. The remaining 50% of product selection are unrelated and do not overlap.
His competitor has been in business for over 5 years and their annual sales are about $1,000,000 per year. My friend has a lot of very good ideas and approaches his business in a very unique and creative way. According to my friend, his unethical competitor has stolen his recent marketing campaign.
The story is, my friend began testing a new ad campaign on one of the leading search engines. After a few days, his competitor took his ad, made a few slight changes and began running similar ads on the remaining search engines. The ads are so close that they could easily cause confusion. Due to confidential business information, I am not going to provide the exact ads, but here is an example of the ads:
My friend’s ad:
Powerful Backyard Tools
Everything you need to get your backyard ready for spring.
His direct competitor’s ad:
Backyard Powerful Tools
Get your backyard ready for spring – Everything you need.
In addition, to stealing his latest campaign, a few months ago this same competitor copied the basic design and layout of his website. When I looked at the two sites, I was easily confused by the layout, design and titles of the two websites.
So back to the question in my title: Should you steal your competitors marketing ideas and brand identity? The answer is Yes! Let me explain. The only reason you should steal your competitors’ marketing ideas and brand identity is for the following reasons:
- You want to completely destroy your company’s unique selling advantage
- You want to lose your own brand identity
- You don’t have any original and creative ideas
- You want to get sued for copyright and trademark infringement
- You want to confuse your own customer base
Although we could easily create a list with dozens of bullet points, let’s take a closer look at each one of the above list.
You want to completely destroy your company’s unique selling advantage (USA): If you spent more than one day as a sales professional, you know that sales are made by explaining the advantages of your product over the competition. In addition, you need to explain the differences. By explaining the differences in product features, you present your products as the solution to your customer’s problems. I don’t mean you should badmouth your competitors. I mean to point out what makes your products unique. By copying your competitors, your company will lose its USA.
You want to lose your own brand identity: If you spend all of your time copying your competitor’s ideas you will lose what your company stands for and what your company is about. Your brand will become a carbon copy of the brand you are copying. This may appear to make sense in the short-term, but it will be lethal in the long-term. The reason it will not be good for your company is you will not have the experience of creating original material and content. You will get into the habit of copying and not developing your own creative and critical thinking skills. In addition, if you copy a competitor, you are consciously or unconsciously admitting your competitor is the leader in your industry. This is also very bad for your company.
You don’t have any original and creative ideas: Admittedly, creative and original ideas are very tough to create 365 days a year. If your company is lacking in ideas, the best place to create new ideas is to take a vacation. I find 3-4 day quick vacations work best for me. In addition to a 3-day weekend, you may consider hiring an outside consultant to infuse new ideas into your company.
You want to get sued for copyright and trademark infringement: In the 21st century, intellectual property (IP) is the most valuable asset a company can possess. Since business moves at the speed of light, companies are very aggressive in protecting their IP and prosecuting any infringer to the fullest extent. Infringing of any sort is never a good idea.
You want to confuse your own customer base: My friend laughed when he said the following, “although my competitor is copying my ideas and campaigns, he is actually helping me to grow my business.” Let me explain; my friend’s competitor is larger than his business, so this means his competitor has a larger customer database. In essence, his competitor is actively confusing his own customers by copying my friend’s website and campaigns.
In addition, his competitor is aggressively putting himself out of business. He is spending his time to copy my friend instead if creating creative campaigns to grow his own business. His competitor is more worried about my friend’s business than his own. Again, good for my friend, but very bad for his competitor.
If you have comments or suggestions on how my friend could combat this copying competition, send me a note. I’ll pass along your comments to my friend.
