Choose your competitors

So I’ve been thinking about cars recently. At some point, I’d like to get an all-electric car, so I was reading a bunch about the various options, which invariably included a lot about Teslas.

When the first Tesla’s came out, the competitors the company chose were other luxury cars: the Lexus, BMW, Mercedes of the world. Teslas were (are) super expensive and were undoubtably luxury vehicles.

This is a non-obvious choice for positioning an electric car, and in fact is probably a huge piece of why Tesla’s have become so popular. Nissan, on the other hand, positioned the Leaf as a car for frugal environmentalists. The thing that struck me the most as I was reading about electric cars is that in this scenario, the Nissan Leaf is not competing with other cars. It’s competitor is a bicyle. This comparison was made pretty explicit by a couple of people writing about the Leaf and saying something along the lines of “I can’t really make do with just a bike, but this car is the next best thing.”

If your competitor is a bicycle, there are a couple of things you should not highlight as your value. Such as:

  • The low price. The bike is always going to be cheaper.

  • How environmentally friendly you are. This is taken for granted and the bike is better for the environment.

On the other hand, even the crappiest electric car is going to be more comfortable and have a longer ‘range’ than a bike. It’s also going to be quite a bit faster. So:

  • The fastest environmentally sound transportation

  • The most comfortable environmentally-friendly transportation

Would be be totally accurate. The car is faster than a bike or the bus, it’s also a lot more comfortable.

You want to both know what your target market is going to compare you to (is it an intern? a spreadsheet? 10 hours of manual work? crossing their fingers no one finds the security vulnerabilities?). But you also want to consciously choose who you want to be compared to. This will have ramifications for your product roadmap, as well as your marketing and sales strategy.

Emily Omier