Hi habr! For a long time I read the book Marketing Wars . It describes a rather interesting point of view: an attempt to associate marketing strategies with strategies in a war.

Therefore in this article I will briefly tell about the principles from the book, I will give a couple of examples from life and I will explain what does Habr mean here.

What kind of marketing maneuvers?

First of all, the authors argue that different companies (in terms of size) have different capabilities (which is obvious so far). Moreover, a small company in the local market can often stand up to a large company.

However, what is the best way to act? From the table of contents of the Russian edition:

The authors identify four main types of marketing strategies:

• defensive: only the strong can afford to defend effectively, if a competitor has launched an attack - do everything so that she drowns
• offensive: only talented generals can successfully fight; find the weakness of the enemy, attacking, do not spray
• guerrilla: the market segment for which you are applying should be no more than you are able to successfully defend; tactics of survival of small companies among the "sharks of business"
• flank: a successful flank maneuver can be made only in the market segment in which the competitor has weak positions; the key to success of the flank strike is in its suddenness.

I will not retell the whole book, because then the article will be indecently large. I will retell only a series of theses with ideas of justification.

First of all, we will consider an isolated market (for example, the market of carbonated drinks). He is good because there is a leader on it (for the USA and for the time of writing the book) - this is Coca Cola. There are also several companies in second place, for example, Pepsi. If we consider the main company, then its main task is to keep the market and negotiate with the state. It is quite interesting that the convenience of users is not in the first place, rather it is necessary to simply maintain the level. You may even now notice that the general style of popular carbonated drinks practically does not change: the same brands, the same tastes, the same quality, the same price, the same advertisement with trucks for the New Year.

I repeat the thesis: the market leader primarily monitors the states and the closest competitors. He has enough money to respond to unexpected actions from the same Pepsi. However, it is much more difficult to fight against antitrust authorities, because the market share should not increase dramatically. It should be more or less the same.

What can Pepsi do? Strangely enough, but its task is to repeat the leader’s products more or less, try not to lag behind. Of course, you can make an attack , for example - create your own carbonated drink. Or buy a small company for the sake of a license for a formula to start producing everything in factories (this will be the very attack, like Pepsi did several times). However, it is more important to keep up. If the leader has a carbonated drink with an orange flavor, you must have the same.

So, the thesis: second-tier companies should primarily focus on the leader. Convenience of users is also important for them, but often the scheme with repetition gives good results.

With guerrilla attacks, everything is simple: you keep a very small amount of the local market, but you create the most convenient product for customers. And it is important that on the one hand you would have the opportunity to keep this market share. On the other hand, this market should not be very interesting for sharks (in terms of profit). The authors give a good analogy with Jeep cars, which were small enough not to interest most families in the United States, but they are quite passable to interest people who need to move through difficult terrain . In fact, the owners of the company occupied a small niche that was not interesting to large corporations (the same Ford), but the products were still in demand.

The flank attack is that your competitor is large enough so that he cannot quickly respond to your actions, thereby giving you a market share. For example, how can Coca Cola be attacked when it began to distribute its vending machines in the USA, which were programmed for a certain price of a bottle (and it was difficult to change the price, since everything was in 1962, so the price was programmed at the factory)? Of course, lower prices or increase the volume of the bottle. It turned out that Coca Cola spent a considerable budget for the distribution of machines, which very quickly began to lose Pepsi in terms of price / quality ratio.

As you noted, in my retelling I divided the companies into the following categories:

• Market leader
• Second tier companies
• Local firms

And we have four kinds of actions:

• Defense (in fact - the answer to the actions of competitors)
• Attack (standard actions, like launching a new product, with high costs for marketing, development, etc.)
• Flank attack (unexpected actions to which the market leader is extremely difficult to answer)
• Guerrilla attack (firmly hold a small, but localized market share; the leader simply will not notice us)

The task of the market leader is to defend and advance. Simple and ingenuous. He is already the leader. His task is to defend the position.
The task of the second tier companies is to take away the market share of the leader. Ideally, it is better to do flank maneuvers, but we should not forget about simple attacks.
The task of local firms is to unnoticeably partisan.

And what about examples from life?

A good example of a flank attack is the work of Tesla (the one that makes cars). The fact is that despite the seemingly standard components, market leaders simply cannot make the same machine. From my subjective point of view, this is incredibly cool: you have a product that can be repeated, but it has a number of functions that simply can not appear in the cars of major concerns here and now.

So, here are these points:

• Adaptive cruise control with the brand Autopilot. It seems the Mercedes has the same cruise control. And Huindai showed a video with him back in 2014 . However, if Mercedes starts to advertise their cars in the style of "read the tablet - the car will drive itself", then almost immediately get a lot of lawsuits (for example, for the killed drivers). But Tesla is hard to sue (less company turnover, less money).
• Futuristic design (in the cabin just an iPad without levers, etc.) that does not fit the style of Toyota, VW, etc. You yourself have seen quite a few comments on the topic of "unusual management", but by buying Tesla you take a new car brand, that is we have no high expectations from her. And buying a BMW, you take a BMW, with well-known headlights and grille. Corporations simply can not produce cars with unrecognizable appearance. This fact was very unexpected for me, but it is a fact - the style of the company should be one. And this step is essentially Tesla (I do not know, by accident or intentionally).
• Other production scheme. The same VW at one time stated that in order to transfer the plants to the production of electric vehicles, it would have to fire about 8,000 people. This is an extremely unpopular and potentially expensive step. And besides, new assembly lines will still have to be done, so corporations, unlike Tesla, have costs not only for the creation of new plants, but also for stopping the old ones.

Another example of guerrilla action is the Nintendo Wii game console. It has a clearly marked main market - this is Japan (although, more precisely, the lovers of Japan). And the manufacturer is trying to protect this market as much as possible, which makes it possible to ignore the main players. In fact, the rear of the Wii manufacturer is out of range, which makes a profit.

Examples of brute force attacks can be seen with the naked eye. For example, if you go back to the same consoles, the release of a new and faster version of PS / XBox is the same attack. We spent a lot of money on development and marketing, and in return received strengthening positions. Or, in the case of XBox: added the ability to work with the console as with a media player or advanced TV. The scheme is simple (by the way, according to the authors of the book, this standard Microsoft scheme) - spent a lot of resources to create an additional function, and without regard to profit. In this plus a large corporation - it has an inexhaustible budget. She can afford to keep a loss-making product for years.

Another example of a flank attack is Xiaomi's actions. This is a new company that can experiment (unlike Apple). The reason is a simple idea: the company from Steve Jobs has two features:

• Large amount of money. Lawyers know this, and therefore any mistake can lead to claims for compensation (including an implicit one, such as recall of phones). In this case, you just can not take risks, in the course are only proven solutions.
• Reputation of the manufacturer of "reliable devices". And yes, I know that not all devices are reliable. And the phrase “reputation of the manufacturer of reliable devices” is not the same as “manufacturer of reliable devices”. However, the reputation is, and it brings money.

Xiaomi is successfully using this, and therefore they released Mi 4s, which never received a global firmware, despite the promise . In the case of Xiaomi, this is normal, they made an experimental phone, they sold it, but decided not to develop it. In the case of Apple, even such an evasive response could lead to phone returns, as well as reputational losses.

I do not claim that the leaders of Xiaomi did wrong, just the opposite: they take advantage of their absence of a long-term reputation (compared to the same Apple). From here they can act as a local firm, that is, to work with buyers who are willing to work with a phone that has “some shortcomings compared to advertising and competitors.”

And where is Habr?

Observing the changes to this site, I came to the conclusion that a number of actions are simply erroneous (of course, only if we accept the hypotheses from the book Marketing Wars). If you try to link Habr to any sector on the Internet, we get that the site is something between a news site, a blog platform and a social network.

In the market of news sites Habr is more authoritative in technical issues related to IT. In fact, this is a typical partisan, which clearly keeps its market sector. And the authority of the resource earlier (and perhaps even now) was expressed in the fact that only those who could write an article about anything related to IT could create content on the portal.
Similarly, about the blogging platform - if on Medium there can be blogs on just about anything, then on Habré they are only about IT (and what is close to it). Thus, the site is "localized", however, the value of its audience for the advertiser increases (for it is very targeted).
Formally, Habr fits the definition of a social network , but with the same partisan perspective.

So, let's try to build a logical connection:

• There are three main categories of the company, in relation to the market: the leader, the second echelon, the local company (recall - this is just a hypothesis from the book)
• Habr plays in the market of social networks (for communication), news sites (in the style of "who read, while the code is compiled") and blogs ("where to write, to be noticed")
• In all three markets, Habr is a "local company", i.e. occupies a small market, but its audience is clearly outlined, i.e. IT.
• From the points above (and from the reasoning of a rather authoritative book ), it follows that a local firm should be content with a small one and engage in partisan attacks. Or in another way:
  
  • Do not scatter the focus of articles. IT and only IT. Even this article can be on the resource for one reason only - it is in the Habrahabr blog.
  • Do not spread the audience to mix with competitors. If you put pikabu "here anyone can read and write", then the style of Habr "only a person who knows at least IT can read and write here"

All the basic facts follow only from hypotheses (albeit fairly plausible and authoritative), so the consequences should be treated with a fair amount of skepticism. However, it turns out that now (yes, right now) Habr makes the following mistakes:

• Read And Comment significantly increases the audience. Moreover, the target audience decreases. If earlier on Habré there were only those who found the strength to write a little bit technical, now on this site:
  
  • Multiaccounts - proof . Question 1: will the reputation of the resource decrease if they have decreased in “content fillers”? Question 2: Is it easier or more difficult to keep part of the market if the reputation goes down?
  • Olginsky bots - proof with a beautiful branch of comments . As I understand it, on Habré they are still quietly struggling with this scourge.
• Mixing directionality from IT to "talk about IT":
  
  • AUE authors of articles - proof for comment . I think it is precisely the talk of the concept that the IT market lacks.
  • Selling Chinese illiquid proof on the article marketer who was able to sell through geektimes . And if at the time when the grass was greener, the marketer Habra could argue that "we have technically savvy authors of articles," now we can safely add "as well as marketers who do not know what a processor is, but don’t see on the site ".
  • Announcements from corporate blogs - [proof for an article with zero technical]

And the conclusion?

Often, a company's marketing policy can be built and evaluated according to these simple principles. Moreover, these actions give quite tangible results with the correct market estimates (and in the absence of absolutely global shocks). Of course, we must not forget that all these are just hypotheses, even though they are plausible and workers. But how workers they can be assessed in a few years, because Habr is now seeking to move from "guerrilla action" to broader attacks on its markets.