The “devil you know” can be a psychological barrier to switching, and can feel like the path of least resistance. But if the customers you’re trying to capture are struggling with their current software, it’s the perfect time to present yourself as The Alternative. And you might find yourself with some of the best, most educated customers you’ll have, given their prior experience with other systems (and the problems you’re helping them solve.)
Stealing customers is not a new idea. The produce stand from one side of the street is always going to claim: “fresher, bigger, juicier” than the other produce stand. And will probably even give out a few free samples to snag the loyal customers across the way. But in order to capture your competitors’ customers, you’ll need to prove yourself, and quickly.
Signs You’re Ready to Steal Competitors’ Customers
It’s likely that your ideal customers already have a solution, it’s just not yours. You can steal your competitors’ customers by staying alert, and identifying a few opportunities as they come up. Here are signs you should consider stealing:
Knowledge of competition – If you have excellent knowledge of what’s out there, you’ll be able to find and exploit weak spots. To meet your sales goals, you’ll need new info on your possible clients; use your marketing team to research them, and see where they’re coming from. Plus, carefully understanding your competitor’s specialties may reveal that their clients aren’t the ones you need or want, so you can waste less effort there.
Crowded market – When the market is saturated, it can be hard to reach sales goals with the market share you currently hold. Competition is there, and you’ll just have to work around it. Stealing might be the best option.
Clear differentiation – If your product is strongly set apart (but your future customers don’t know it yet) you can make the case for the switch by setting up your clear differentiators. Search review sites to see where you soar higher.
Not the market leader – If the 800-pound gorilla isn’t you, it’s time to get scrappy and start stealing. You’re not the biggest and most well-known, but all you need are a few more customers to switch. If you already are, you probably have the market share you want, thanks to word-of-mouth marketing and brand recognition.
Competitor setbacks (bad press, stopping services, closing down) – Stay on top of Google alerts for your competition. Know when things are going awry so you can step in to offer your solution to a floundering set of customers looking for an alternative.
Attracting Competitors’ Customers
Google Ads
An ever-popular way to steal customers from your competition is through Google advertising. Especially by using the competitors’ brand name, saying “Brand X doesn’t have A or B.” This will be a direct comparison, so your company should be ready to go neck-and-neck, putting their brand name directly on your landing page. These competitor campaigns can be tricky to pull off (as you can’t use their name in the advertising copy itself). Their brand will need to be on the landing page to match your keyword strategy. Then start targeting those campaigns. Linkedin Ads are also worth an honorable mention here—if that’s where your potential customers are.
Pro-tip: Use a comparison matrix to show exactly how you stack up against the competition. Think: pricing, features, customer service, and however else you can beat them out.
Account-Based Marketing Display Ads
By using ABM platforms like 6sense or DemandBase you can target your display ads based on intent signals from your competitor keywords. That way, if they’re looking for your competitor, you can snag that traffic with your messaging—just be sure to create an ad to grab their attention.
Pro-tip: You should already know your prospects’ pain point(s). Use that to tailor your messaging and help them feel like jumping ship won’t be all that difficult. Don’t over-explain your features. Instead, point out your solutions to their problems with their current software provider.
Customer-Stealing Caveats
Objections & Solutions
Your marketing isn’t convincing.
Stealing customers isn’t all that simple. It’s a focused form of marketing, and takes research, data, and a lot of planning. If your best marketing ploy is just “Use us, we’re better” it’s not going to convince your desired customers to switch. They want to know: What’s in it for them?
Solution: Show proof: social proof, reviews, awards, third-party site comparisons, plus plenty of data to show exactly how you’ve improved other clients’ systems after they made the switch.
Money and time are too precious to switch software providers.
SaaS products are pricey, and with that comes high switching costs. Your competition may have your audience locked in a contract. The time and energy it takes to onboard and retrain feels like a losing game. It takes a lot to change providers—and they have to be pretty unhappy to want to start all over.
Solution: Provide free trials. Offer to buy out contracts if you can. Show how easy it is to use, and promise (and keep this promise) to walk them through the *fast* onboarding and the training processes until their team is fully comfortable. Help with stakeholder buy-in, since someone higher up will have to approve the purchase.
They’ve never heard of you.
This is maybe the most challenging of all. But if you want a bigger market share, you’ll need to carve out a spot for your company.
Solution: Find a way to enter into the market in ways that other companies are not. Use your differentiators. Locate the pain points of your competitors and create campaigns around the features of your software that solve them.
Not every industry has an even playing field when it comes to stealing customers. If you can offer a lower price in manufacturing for instance, you may be able to easily have customers change over. However, if you’re in B2B SaaS, it will be much trickier to convince your ideal customer that you’re their ideal software provider.
The Future of the Stealing Strategy
SEO is changing. Of course. There’s far more competition in paid search because every company is concerned about their results with organic. Competition is fierce and getting fiercer by the day, especially when you’re competing for the same audience.
If you want to gain visibility, consider adding paid ads into your marketing mix. And know what you’re up against: what is your competition doing to attract clients? What should you be doing?
It’s Not Over When They Switch
Your competitors’ customers have chosen you—nice work—but now you have to convince them to stay. Make sure you don’t forget about keeping them on your side. It’s a 1-2-3 punch:
- Acquire – You got them!
- Acquaint – Get them familiar and swiftly onboarded.
- Acclimate – Ensure the whole team is comfortable. Communicate with them often.
When Should You Not Attempt the Steal?
Are you ready to stir up trouble? If you’re starting to wage a war that’s going to flatten your marketing budget and lower morale, you probably shouldn’t toy with trying to steal customers. If your competitor is far bigger than you, their budget will be bigger, too. They can outspend you on ads any day of the week, so have your rationale on that extra ad spend ready for your C-suite.
Some of our clients go into it with a “tit for tat” attitude—their competitors are doing it to them, so they feel justified running a campaign to hang on to their clientele while cross-stealing from the competition. In business, some might say “Don’t worry about the competition, worry about yourself.” But when the market share’s limited and becoming more so, you’re going to have to worry about the competition.
All in all, if you want to steal your competitors’ customers, start small. Do a lot of research and testing. Earmark one competitor you want to steal from. Find out what their messaging is, tailor your messaging with that in mind, refine your offer, and target your marketing campaign. Test it out. Measure your results. Make decisions based on data, not on gut reactions. And remember: this is just one piece of the marketing puzzle—you shouldn’t plan to build your company on “use us instead.”
