Dealing with competition is a never-ending struggle for brands. Some shy away from talking about their competitors. Others, make a bold move. They incorporate comparative advertising in their marketing strategy. If you need an approach that is somewhere in between both of these, consider designing a competitor comparison landing page.
A competitor comparison landing page will be an honest story of how your brand stands out in a competitive space. Do not confuse this with comparative advertising.
Comparative advertising is not a new concept. In fact, even big brands do that. Take a look at the below ad for example.
In comparative advertising, you do not talk about the strengths of your competitor. It is often a way to take a dig at the competition, in a light-hearted manner, as in the ad above. Comparative advertising can help strengthen your brand awareness. But it does not really give much information about your product either.
Competitor comparison landing pages, on the other hand, tell customers what features matter the most in your industry. And then provide them with a clear picture of where your brand stands in the competition.
A competitor comparison page is more like telling them how you are better than your competitors and giving them proof. It is a fair practice in marketing, provided you display your strengths without demeaning your competitor in any way.
It is only fair that you are curious to know why you should be spending time and money designing an additional landing page, that sometimes does not even include a direct CTA. Below are some of the benefits of competitor comparison landing pages that will make you eager to design one for your brand.
So, designing a comprehensive competitor comparison page builds the credibility of your brand, brings in quality leads, and also helps customers make informed purchase decisions. Knowing this, how can you design a powerful competitor comparison landing page for your brand?
When it comes to buying a new product, nearly 87% of shoppers start their search online. They look for information about the product and the popular brands offering them. A buyer’s journey goes from strengthening their awareness and then comparing their choices and finally making a decision.
If you make your comparison table, accurate and informative it will help customers in their consideration stage and make it easy for them to make a confident decision. Making your competitor comparison page informative means identifying and listing down the critical parameters that matter.
Do you have the habit of referring to a buyer’s guide or product comparison charts before buying a new product? You are not alone. Your customers love them too. So, if you include a roundup of as many valuable parameters as possible, in your comparison page, it will have your audience hooked.
When more and more people start referring to your comparison page before making their decision, it also helps in improving your site’s SEO performance.
Proof can be in the form of client testimonials or achievements of your brand. The goal here is to give customers a reason to trust your brand and the information you provide them. You might have a separate page to talk in detail about your clientele and the awards and accolades your brand has received. But adding a line on the comparison page just makes it more credible.
Take a look at the below comparison page by Sendinblue, a marketing solutions provider. Mentioning the award right before the comparison further reiterates the fact that the brand has been recognized for its performance.
You might know who your closest competitor is. But your customers might have more than two options in their minds. And they might not be ready to make a decision by comparing just two choices. Comparing your brand with more than one competitor will therefore be a good idea.
While you provide multiple comparisons, you have two options:
Having it all on the same page makes it easier for the customers. Another option will be to add a drop-down list as in the image below.
This gives a more exhaustive overview without having to navigate your customers from one page to another.
In the below image, Hubspot gives a brief introduction about Marketo and even includes a link to Marketo’s pricing page as proof of the information furnished. This lets customers know that what they are seeing is an honest and exhaustive comparison of the products in front of them.
Adding citations, and linking to the actual data based on which you collate your information are all ways to strengthen your competitor comparison table. And including brief details about your competitor will be a more genuine way of presenting the information. This will also make sure that you are giving due credit to the brand you are mentioning.
When you use your competitor’s brand name and logo on your comparison page, you should be extra careful. You should understand your competitor’s logo usage policies. The safest way to do it will be to keep the comparison table simple and with just the text version of the brand names, without including the logos.
You can incorporate your brand colors, as in the image above, or even a smaller version of your logo next to your brand name while keeping the other competitor names aligned with the rest of the text in the table. If you do choose to use the logo, use the right colors and stick with standard brand assets so that you do not face any intellectual property issues.
Visuals make it easier to process information. So, if you want to make an impact in seconds, one way is to incorporate interactive visuals in your comparison page. You can pick out the key points you would like to compare and highlight. Come up with a graphical representation of these comparisons and you are good to go.
The below visual from Microsoft is bang on. It simply highlights the one critical strength of Azure that many users agree with, its affordability. The Azure Vs. AWS comparison page is pretty detailed with a lot of information. But you will notice an extensive use of visuals. This makes the page convenient to navigate through and more engaging.
You’ll mostly see such comparison pages on SaaS business websites. But this is a concept that works well with most types of businesses catering to software products and even service-based brands. As long as you are able to put together a set of common attributes of comparison between your brand and your competitors, you can create a competitor comparison landing page.
