FLANKING MARKETING

"The time your game is most vulnerable is when you're ahead. Never let up." - Rod Laver, Adidas

In military strategy, flanking is attacking the opponent from the side. It’s effective because the enemy’s strength is usually concentrated at the front. By attacking the side, you’re more likely to hit a weaker spot, one less defended – giving you an advantage.

Many marketers ignore the lessons of military history and continue to attack competitors head-on, a strategy that seldom works. They should consider flanking.

WHAT IS FLANKING MARKETING?

A flanking attack strategy in marketing is designed to get competitors focused on hitting the competitors' weaknesses and surmounting them. Weaknesses might include customer segments not being reached or geographic areas being overlooked by the market leader, which creates an area of opportunity for brands in the challenger role.

Flank strategies are less risky to competitors because they focus on moving stealthily to enter an uncontested area of the market. The biggest challenge comes when the market leader identifies a competitor's entry into a market with a new product or service, and then throws all of its energy behind eclipsing the new entry.

FEATURES OF FLANKING MARKETING:

1. This marketing strategy doesn’t confront the two teams openly.

2. The surprising part of this marketing strategy the winning player gain access in the market before its competitors realize that.

3. Follow through once the leading position established.

4. This strategy works for differentiated product not for the new product.

EXAMINING THE SITUATION BEFORE EXECUTING THE FLANKING MARKETING

1. Right timing?

Start by understanding where the buyer is in their process and your competition. Flanking works best when entering late-stage deals where you’re at a significant disadvantage. If you’re brought in late and up against well-established competitors, you must do something bold.

1. Right target?

If you’re going to reframe the problem, the customer must be open to doing so. There is some risk here. In some cases, the customer will be married to their idea of the solution, and it can be impossible to change their mind. When this is the case, flanking won’t work. Don’t be afraid to ask about their openness to a different approach.

1. Right issues?

Your flanking strategy requires that you address the right customer issues. Pivoting to a set of issues that the customer doesn’t care about is a sure-fire way to kill the deal. Effective questioning in the discovery process can help validate your hypotheses on what the right issues might be. Diving into the personas of the buying decision team is also helpful in refining the issue focus.

1. Right message?

Tailored messaging is at the heart of flanking strategy. What’s the conversational on-ramp for your flanking strategy? How will you present your alternative perspective? What do you say and what collateral will you use to support the message? When our SaaS client responses to RFPs, they fulfill the basic information request. But they deliver additional content that reorients the buying decision team on a different set of issues

1. Right inside support?

As in all complex sales, having internal advocates or champions to help sell on your behalf is critical. This is especially true when flanking. Someone in the buying team should share your view and be able to articulate the benefits of your approach. No one wants their thinking to be called out as ‘wrong’, so it can be a tough job for your advocate to change the views of their colleagues.

TYPES OF FLANKING MARKETING

Low price flanking-

As we know that customers are price sensitive and in this type of strategy the competitors try toconvince more customers with its low-price flanking.

Example- Coca cola labelled its cold drinks with a subtle low price in summer season for deriving more customers and gets an advantage over competitors.

High price flanking-

In this type of flanking attack the marketer claims to deliver a high-quality product and prove itself better than competitors.

Example- Apple iPhone are sold at a higher price in the market though their features are almost identical with most of the smart phones.

Size flanking-

Size flanking means introducing low-sized products without compromising the quality and delivering more valuable and beneficial products. 

Example- In 1970, the Japanese automaker acquires the concept of small cars from the US automobiles that deliver more performance and efficiency.

Geographic flanking-

In this, the marketer analyses the different types of segments in the market and choose the one which is underdeveloped and that can turn into a profitable business.

Example- Mitti cool is a small refrigeration system introduced by the company to target the people of rural areas, who cannot afford a refrigerator. It also caters the problem of no electricity in these backward areas as it works without electricity.

CASE STUDIES OF DIFFERENT COMPANIES

MERCEDES-BENZ

Mercedes has increased its sales in the U.S. market every year for the last 13 years in a row, from 61,899 vehicles in 1994 to 247,934 vehicles in 2006, an increase of 300 percent.

These increases were in spite of some pretty negative stories in the media about the reliability of the brand.

Headline: An engineering icon slips. Subhead: Quality ratings for Mercedes drop in several surveys. The Wall Street Journal, February 4, 2002.

Headline: Mercedes head-on collision with a quality survey. Business Week, July 21, 2003.

Headline: Mercedes hits a pothole. Subhead: Owner complaints are up. Resale values are down. Fortune, October 27, 2003.

In 2007 Mercedes-Benz ranked dead last in predicted reliability.

When Mercedes-Benz arrived in the American market, its cars were considerably more expensive than Cadillacs. The high prices created the perception that the Mercedes brand was somehow superior to the Cadillac brand. In other words, in a class by itself. (Nicely reinforced by its long-time advertising theme: Engineered like no other car in the world.)

As a result of its high prices, Mercedes sales took off slowly

1954: 1,000 (The number imported, not all of which were sold that year.)

1964: 11,234.

1974: 38,826.

1984: 79,222.

1994: 73,002.

After 40 years in the American market, Mercedes was still selling fewer vehicles in a year than Chevrolet was selling in a month. No wonder General Motors wasn’t particularly concerned.

But Mercedes was building a brand that was going to pay enormous dividends down the road. In 2006, Mercedes-Benz outsold Cadillac 247,934 to 227,014.

Remember when Cadillac used to mean something? Remember when the Cadillac of the category was a compliment applied to many different brands in many different categories?

No longer. Cadillac is just another brand flanked by a competitor with a superior strategy.

AUDI AG

Audi AG wants to be the leading premium brand worldwide by 2010, according to chairman Martin Winterkorn.

And just last year, Johan de Nysschen, executive vice president of Audi of America, said he wants to turn Audi into a sophisticated, edgy, luxury brand for the U.S. market as it shoots for a long-term sales goal of 200,000 vehicles a year by 2015.

Towards that goal, Audi just introduced the $110,000, 420-hp, space-frame R8 sports car, the $82,675 420-hp RS 4 cabriolet and the $51,275 354-hp S5 sports coupe. The sports cars, according to according to Marc Trahan, Audis No. 2 U.S. executive, help to further strengthen and clarify what Audi is all about.

Audi, in my opinion, is not going to be the leading premium brand worldwide by 2010 and Audi is not going to sell 200,000 vehicles in the U.S. by 2015.

In the 34 years that Audi has been selling vehicles in the U.S. market, it has never sold more than 100,000 units a year. In 2006, sales were just 90,116 units, less than Suzuki, which sold 100,990 vehicles.

In the automobile field, like in many other fields, what matters most is the brand, not the product. And Audi is a weak brand for two reasons:

(1) Unlike Mercedes-Benz, Audi did not flank the competition by introducing the first expensive automobile brand in the American market.

(2) Audi, at least in America, is not a very good name.

ABSOLUT

By pricing the brand 50 percent higher than the best-selling Smirnoff vodka, Absolut created a new category which ultimately became known as a premium vodka.

What Absolut did to Smirnoff, Grey Goose did to Absolut. By pricing the brand 60 percent higher than Absolut, Grey Goose created a new category that ultimately became known as ultra-premium vodka. Seven years after its introduction, entrepreneur Sidney Frank sold his Grey Goose to Bacardi Ltd. for $2 billion.

HANES

Hanes used the distribution type strategy of flanking marketing. They flanked their competition by selling their product through a new distribution system, which was supermarkets. The competitors were only selling their products in clothing stores until Hanes did it for the first time.