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I’m going to go through a couple of examples and see if you can catch what’s going on here. General Motors versus Ford, one-year warranty, two-year warranty, three-year warranty, five-year warranty and Lifetime Powertrain Warranty. Toyota versus Honda, 24-month financing, 36-month financing, 48-month financing, 60-month financing, 72-month financing, 84-month financing and 120-month financing. UPS, FedEx, three days guaranteed delivery, two-day guaranteed delivery, next day guaranteed delivery, same day guaranteed delivery. Do you get the idea? Zappos, overnight packages, not expecting it. Uber Eats, taking away the pizza delivery business. Here’s the key. This climb of commitment or this leapfrog over the competitors’ commitment is going to happen in your industry with or without you. The question is, “Do you feel like playing leapfrog?”
The brand promise commitment game is never going to stop. Click To Tweet
Here’s the question. How do you find the top five commitments, meaning competitors’ commitments to their customer? What do you do with that? First of all, you’ve got to find your competitors. Who are your competitors? Everybody reading this blog has competitors you don’t even know of. If I’m going to do a scan or an analysis to find one of my client’s competitors, I’m going to open a tool called BuzzSumo.com. I’m going to type in the industry. I might type in architecture. I might type in landscaping, dentist, or something like that. I’m going to hit go. What’s going to happen is, I’m going to get the twenty most viral pieces of content over. There’s a bunch of other settings that you can set BuzzSumo to go pull up coal and research. You’re going to go through those settings. Find out what setting would most likely call up your competitors’ information.
First of all, I’m going to start with the most viral piece of content. I’m going to see if there are any social influencers or any companies in there that are either launching content in your industry or moving content in your industry. You’ll understand once you get inside that tool. It’s free or $9 to get BuzzSumo. The bottom line is, you will flush out some competitors you didn’t know existed. Another way to do it is, go to SEMRush.com. Put in your website name and click competitor. If your website is not big enough so that Google can track by keyword density who your competitors are, name one of the bigger competitors in your space. Put their website name into the SEMrush search bar. Run their diagnostics and hit the word competitor.
Once you see the five, ten, fifteen competitors, you can in each of these apps, plug them into the other app and flush out even more competitors. Once you’ve got these five to ten competitors’ websites listed on a piece of paper, you’re going to simply open up their website and read their brand promise. What is their commitment to their customer? Everybody is going to guarantee their services, but you’re going to notice there are going to be five or six of these people, these companies, that are doing something outlandish. Think about overnight delivery, when Fred Smith from FedEx first proposed that, he was thought to be insane. “Who is this guy going to guarantee overnight delivery?” Now every one of the major three has same day delivery. You get them to package by 9:00 AM. They’re going to have it on the other side of the country by 5:00 PM.
Your team capability multiplied by your risk tolerance is defined as your commitment to your customer. Click To Tweet
The brand promise commitment game is never going to stop. The leapfrog game is never going to stop. What you do is you mark them all on a spreadsheet. You gauge their level of commitment. One of those five is going to have a stronger commitment than the other four. You ask yourself, “Since one of these other four is going to leapfrog that commitment anyway in the next year, two years, five or ten, why not be you?” Do you know what it costs to change the commitment to a customer? Nothing. It’s a brand promise of things to come. It doesn’t cost you anything. What if the brand promise backfires? Here’s the deal. If you don’t make that brand promise, those other four and five are going to pull away anyway. The level you’re going to grow is directly related to your IP plus your team capability multiplied by your risk tolerance. Risk tolerance is defined as your commitment to your customer. Go make a bigger commitment. Use these tools, go rock and roll. I hope this helps.
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