Do you have the balls to put a comparative ad against your competitor?

[doublethinker]

I am about to put a comparison chart of my competitors against my product because I am confident that I am top gun in the industry (right now at least). And I want their users. The chart is a simple comparison of pure numbers, and just one measurement, let's say the speed of delivery. The metric is taken from their service (with screenshots to back) and mine- illustrating that mine is better and a short paragraph of how mine is better. It does not try to explain why theirs are "less good", although less good does give an opportunity to strike a low blow at their credibility (which might be true).

The metric is also backed by a deeper explanation via a Reddit post that I will link to as reference.

I'm partially done with the chart, but I find myself hesitating on the click to publish.

Would you put one smack front and center on your landing page? Have you done it before and faced any backlash? Is the gain worth the risk? Legal threats, underhanded attacks .etc?

 

[doublethinker]

The deeper explanation is an opinionated but fair explanation of the chart, which was what started my move towards positioning myself more competitively and doing the comparative ad. I like that it's on Reddit because it provides some sense of authenticity and credibility from the comments of other people who responded.

However, there is a shameless plugger who tried to undercut my product with his own. I think there may be a chance that people might be tempted over to look at his product (his product is cheaper, but a heck less refined), I do not think a significant number of opportunities would be lost to him since they are coming from my funnel of knowledge that I'm feeding them, but I hate that the post is slightly marred.

 

[Ryuzaki]

Is the gain worth the risk? Legal threats, underhanded attacks .etc?

I've never done this, but I wanted to point out that if your business gets big enough, you're going to face legal threats and underhanded attacks anyways. It's just a part of the game.

I think this comparison can be done tastefully. If you keep it strictly fact-based with numbers made public on their own site, and you leave out any insults or emotionally charged language when speaking about them specifically, I can't imagine the competitor going overboard about it.

Regarding the opportunist in the Reddit thread, if the guy's product is less refined, it'll be obvious. There's a lot of people who want the cheapest version of anything, but they're also the biggest headaches. There'll be returns, customer service nightmares, etc. Do you really even want those customers, you know?

Not a week goes by when I don't see the Ahrefs, Majestic, SEMRush triple threat publish a blog post that has a comparison chart against the others. It's a legitimate tactic of raising awareness about some aspect you have that they don't. I think as long as you aren't selective about the data you show and don't manipulate it, it's fair game.

Might it rustle some jimmies? Maybe. Jimmies will rustle eventually anyways. I'd say to be aggressive and go for it. It won't destroy your business. If it doesn't go over well you can always delete it and not draw attention to it.

 

[doublethinker]

I did it, and the world didn't end. I saw a 15% increase and a few inquiries about setting up an affiliate program.

And to answer my own question, yes I have the balls.

 

[Tiberian]

One of my highest performing ad groups in a company I do AdWords for is solely targeted at "competitor name alternatives". We've seen an insane amount of business coming from that group. CPA is 50% less than every other ad group I've run for them. I would highly recommend that anyone put out ads like this if they feel that they are superior in some way to their competitor.

One recommendation I have for writing ads calling out competitors, is to ask for feedback on why people switched. The best performing ads I've written always use word-for-word (or as close to it as possible) complaints from people who switch over. For example, "wish that support would respond?" or "sick of repeat downtime?". Almost guaranteed, those people are switching for similar reasons, or even better, if they go to branded keywords, they might feel the same thing. And your ad could be the reason why they switch!

We even have a graph on the home page comparing our price to theirs, simply because the other company is the biggest in the industry so everyone knows them.

To answer your question, I haven't seen any backlash in particular. Good for you man, I'm glad to hear that it's worked out well for you!

 

[Andrewkar]

Some good meat in this thread. I have situation going on right now with my friend's website. They were one business few months ago, then they had some personal issues so they decided to split. One of the guys was left with ten year old website, and another one with virtually nothing - but his new website is up and running (and I'm with this guy). Another guy is dominating organic and going heavy with ads. So we decided to bet on his brand name (in a form...) and thanks to better ads optimization we are slicing out our piece of cake right now. The other guy have some huge and expensive challenges with the site upfront him, the site is ten years old but it's seating on a very old custom built CMS... patch on a patch..., a bit slow also. Revamping it will cost him small fortune. On the other hand we are on a fresh site up to date with industry standards, fast, schema ready, ad engine etc. We know he is running out of money slowly and we are better at ad optimization. Betting on his brand name (in a way...) is probably the best what we could have done so far. The thing is, to stay safe we kick his brand name indirectly, we use four other websites with nearly identical brand names, so we are justified in doing so.