What is Competitive Advertising? Types, Pros & Cons, Examples 

Businesses and companies employ various types of marketing and promotional strategies to exhibit their superiority in the market. Their goal is to gain a competitive edge and exploit the weaknesses of competitors. Today, we’ll discuss what is competitive advertising; its types, differentiation from comparative advertising; advantages, disadvantages, and examples.

What is Competitive Advertising? 

Competitive advertising is a type of marketing and advertisement campaign where businesses and companies exhibit the superiority of their products and services over the offers of competitors. The competitive ads campaign impacts the preferences of customers and wins a larger market share. Marketers could run the competition ads campaign directly or indirectly.

• Direct Competitive Advertisement: companies run their advertisements on various media channels by directly and specifically mentioning the name of their competitors and establishing their superiority over them.
• Indirect Competitive Advertisement: companies launch advertisement campaigns and show the superiority of their products and services without specifically mentioning the name of the product and brand name.

When businesses and companies run a competitive ad campaign, then it results in the form of ad war. The competition ad campaign would badly jeopardize the reputation of the company once it gets out of hand. Sometimes, the over-aggressive ad strategies could get companies out of business and market.

The aggressive competition ad campaigns shift the attention of companies toward competitors rather than satisfying and addressing the needs and wants of customers. It severely impacts the reputation and image of companies. Therefore, companies should focus on various factors of delivering the best quality product while allocating budget for the competition ad campaign.

Comparative versus Competitive Advertising

A brand presents its particular product and services as superior to the competitor. Here, the company won’t mention the name of the competitor brand. But the target customers could easily pick up the competitor based on the mentioned hints and features of the product. Usually, it makes the comparison based on the traits of fineness, price, and quality.

Competitive advertising, on the other hand, is the objective is on establishing the brand name. Along with comparing the product and services of the company, it puts emphasis on the fact that the challenging company is better than other competitors in the market. However, when companies employ various strategies and reinforcement as a reminder in the comparative advertisement, then it becomes a competitive ads campaign.

Types of Competitive Advertising 

Some of the main types of competitive advertising are as follows;

Negative Advertisement

Here, the challenging company directly lashes out at the competitor brand that how it is not addressing the needs of customers; instead of making a comparison of the company’s offers. Sometimes, companies launch their own product and market it as a better alternative choice without commenting on the competitors.

Market Wide Ranking

Companies have to exhibit the superiority of their product or service over competitors in order to impact the minds of customers in the US market. Sometimes, they run nationwide ad campaigns by highlighting the reason why the challenging brand ranks higher in the market.

High-Quality Products

When you see two competing products in the market and they’re charging the same price with a lot of similarities, then you can easily understand the competition ad concept. It is because one of the brands is following the competing approach and highlighting the fact that its product is of better quality and taste than the other.

Comparative Advertisement

As the name implies, here the challenging company makes the comparison of its products and services with the competitors.

Advantages of Competitive Advertising 

Some of the main advantages of a competition advertisement campaign are as follows

High Market Share

With the increment in sales due to competition ad campaigns, the market share of the company would increase significantly. Your company’s high market share would compel competitors to decrease their competition in order to gain some share. Sometimes, the new entry into the market could decrease sales.

Increased Revenue

The reason companies launch competition advertisement campaign is to increase their sales and profitability. For instance, soft drink brand Coca-Cola is running an ad campaign for many years highlighting the fact that its soda is “the real thing.”

Customer Loyalty

The competition ad campaign also helps businesses and companies to amplify the loyalty of their target customers. When a company has got a loyal database of customers, then it becomes much easier to achieve financial growth and stability.

Additional Benefits

Sometimes, companies launch a competition advertisement campaign to give the message of the quality and security of their product. They help customers to know about their offers so that they could make better decisions while shopping.

Disadvantages of Competitive Advertising 

Some of the main disadvantages of competition advertisement campaign are as follows;

Limited Strategies To Get Attention

Customers have got exposed to a lot of advertisements in today’s world of social and digital media platforms. Usually, sexual and shocking content attracts their attention. Other forms of advertisements won’t get their attention, because they know the company’s marketing strategy.

No Creative Freedom

When your focus is on targeting the competitors with fun and exciting ad, then there is no room for errors and mistakes. While creating something new, you have got creative freedom. But when you have to create a specific ad, then there is no creative freedom.

High Spending on Ad Campaigns

When you’re running the competition ad campaign, then you have to spend the double amount of money on normal ads. It has a very impact and strain on the company’s overall budget, and it would jeopardize the quality of the product because of the low manufacturing budget.

Examples of Competitive Advertising 

Samsung & Apple

Samsung and Apple are the two world’s leading smartphone companies. The challenging brand launches the competition advertisement campaign against the iPhone by making a comparison. However, Samsung highlights the weaknesses of the iPhone against the Galaxy S9 as the slower charging speed of the iPhone, no SD card slot, and lower camera results.

BMW & Mercedes

Mercedes and BMW are the world’s leading giant automobile companies. During the Halloween season in 2019, BMW launched a competitive advertising campaign by showing that the Mercedes is wearing the cover of BMW and said “now every car can dress up as its favorite superhero.” Mercedes replied in a tweet “nice one, @BMWUSA, that’s a really scary costume! Especially, that radiator grille…”  

Conclusion: What is Competitive Advertising? Types, Pros & Cons, Examples 

After an in-depth study of what is competitive advertising; its various types, advantages, disadvantages, and examples; we have realized that a competition ad campaign could be very beneficial for your business. If you’re planning to run it, then you should follow and practice the abovementioned tips and guidelines.