Two Marketing Strategies

When it comes to marketing, there are only two strategies that really work. The first and most obvious one is to have the cheapest price. This is the strategy that Spirit Airlines or Walmart uses for example, they sell exactly the same thing as their competitors but at a fraction of the price. This strategy is particularly effective with commodities like water, gasoline or food, for example.

The second and more difficult strategy is differentiation. Differentiation is the added value that exists in the mind of your target. It doesn’t always need to be an objective or tangible value. It’s the reason why one would prefer a Louis Vuitton bag to a Jansport one even though they both are bags and fit the same amount of things. 

Differentiation is how some of the world's largest companies have managed to grow into the businesses they are today. Amazon grew thanks to being the only company offering 2-day shipping on millions of different products. Netflix grew thanks to being the only company offering access to thousands of movies online for a monthly subscription. Uber differentiated itself from taxis and Airbnb from hotels, eventhough they are both competitors.

The downside of a good differentiation strategy is that eventually your competitors will start to copy you and offer the same to your customers. But that's the key word: “eventually”. Since your brand was the first, it has what is called 1st-Movers Advantage, that is, a competitive advantage with your market segment. This 1st-Movers Advantage allows the brand to establish strong brand recognition and capture a large segment of the market before competitors arrive.

It's the reason why Ford has remained one of the largest carmakers in America for the last 100 years and the reason we use Google and not Bing, or Duck Duck Go. Everyone remembers the first man on the moon, but not everyone remembers the second