How to win against GAFA in 2018?
5 marketing strategies to succeed in today’s aggressive platform economy.
We use them on a daily basis. Even several times per day. They are worth more than twice as much as the entire German stock market. They’ve invented a new type of business model and founded a new economy era. They are digital platforms treasuring up access to billions of customers. Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple rule the world. Every marketer has to pass them if he wants to get his message in front of his target audience.
Hold on a second. Every marketer? Really? Probably not. At least, not the ones who have developped the following five strategies to succeed without GAFA in 2018.
#1 GO HORIZONTAL
Scale your business. Expand your niche offering to new sectors, get new customers and grow. Uber has deployed this strategy in perfection. The ride sharing company started off as an exclusive limousine service back in 2010. Two years later, Uber democratised their service and launched a “taxi” option for everybody. In 2015, the start up entered the growing food delivery market and made Uber Eats available.
#2 RETAIN CUSTOMERS
Fitness gyms, Netflix and the Dollar Shave Club have one thing in common. All deploy a subscription-based business model to make their customers stick. Even car manufactures, such as Volvo, have recently adopted this concept. You can now subscribe to a car instead of buying one. Subscriptions are a great strategy to keep your customers and monetise upon them in the long run.
#3 STAND OUT
We live in an over-communicated society where tons of message bombard everbody 24/7. If you want people to notice you, you need to break through the clutter. You need to stand out, be louder than your competitors and force the world to remember you. One way of achieving this holy grail is to through the good old way of provocation. That’s what Trump is doing all day long, isn’t he? Another way of differentiating your company is to establish your CEO as a personal brand. We all know how Steve Jobs functions as a symbol for Apple’s visionary brand identity. But do you know how the founder of Samsung is called and what he stands for?
#4 DIGITAL PR
Advertising is the price you have to pay for not being interesting enough. In other words: If you know how to tell a great story, you can create free buzz for your brand. One genius at deploying this digital PR strategy is Elon Musk. According to PWC, German managers perceive Tesla Motors as the 6th most innovative company. Yet, measured by actual R&D expenses, Musk’s car brand only ranks 171.
How does Elon Musk manage to achive this reality distortion? First, he raises attention for his brand with a high frequency. In 2017, the CEO has tweeted more than 1,000 times. Second, he realizes absurd PR stunts that the media can’t ignore. Remember his recent PR coup of sending a red Tesla roaster into space. Third, Musk has perfectionized the art of agenda setting. He always jumps on attention-grabbing topics, such as AI, and makes sure to be at the edge of leading debates. Fourth, the Tesla CEO is not an unapproachable business leader but an everyday person. He shares a lot personal information about his life and family and caters to his authentic image.
#5 BE AGILE ON PLATFORMS
Being agile means being at the leading edge. It means playing with the rules of the game by breaking them — or even inventing them. Observe digital platforms and ask yourself: “How do they work? Why do they work this way? And how can I differ from the status quo?”
Let’s take a look at the story of the Champagne Bar Riddle. This San Francisco based hot spot wanted to increase its digital visibility. They didn’t decide to run social ads but painted a street-art graffiti onto their wall. The artwork showed a champagne bottle bottom up. Pedestrians posing in the champagne shower started to conquer the local Instagram feeds quite soon.
SUMMARY
GAFA seem to be the gatekeeper of today’s marketing activities. They have access to a huge amount of customers and marketers pay their bills. Yet, smart business leaders have invented five savy strategies how to avoid them. All strategies derive from out-of-the-boy-thinking, experimentation and the boldness to break rules. Taking this positive development into account, we are looking ahead a bright future. More is about to come…
