By Michael Fertik
Samsung’s corporate coffers will soon be $340K lighter. Taiwan’s Fair Trade Commission fined the company recently because it paid third-party marketers to post positive comments about its products – and to critique competitors’ offerings.
It’s surely not the only corporation that’s done this – but I’d like to believe that it could be the last (wishful thinking, I’m certain). However, the news comes just on the heels of the New York Attorney General’s sting operation against companies posting fake reviews for themselves or clients. So I think this begs the question, how do smart companies best the competition fairly?
Be the better company. Want to win fat market share? Build a better product. It is often that simple. If you can’t credibly tout your product’s differentiators, then you need to go back to the drawing table and enhance it until you can.
Use smart, aboveboard marketing. Most of us probably remember the “Mac vs. PC” campaign. Apple took sly, winking aim at Microsoft by contrasting its hipster, silver-tongued Mac character with the dumpy, schlumpy PC guy. The campaign highlighted the selling points of a Mac while underscoring all the reasons to pass on PCs in one memorable fell swoop. The larger lesson: there’s nothing wrong with outlining a competing product’s deficiencies – so long as it’s apparent to all that the critique is coming from you.
Ask for feedback the right way. It is wise, ethical and good business to ask consumers to review your products and services. In fact, the smartest businesses do precisely that. They share why reviews are important and ask for honest feedback from customers. But they never pay customers (or third-party companies) to write it. And they generally don’t incentivize through coupons, discounts and freebies, either.
The practice of astroreviewing – posting fake content – is bad for businesses and consumers. The best companies are fanatical about data that helps them enhance the consumer experience and their bottom lines. Falsifying content means a review ecosystem that fails to yield usable data on trends in customer perception and attitudes. What a shortsighted move.
And as Samsung and others have recently learned, it’s a practice that’s commonly exposed – at great potential cost to a company’s reputation. Is it worth the price of customer trust and loyalty?
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