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Can Promoting Your Competitors Help Your Business?

I’m always thinking about ways that businesses can make themselves useful, especially when they’re not trying to sell you stuff. And because we’re getting into the thick of the holiday season, that means I’m thinking about the Miracle on 34th Street.

In case you forgot, in the movie (the 1947 original, I haven’t seen the remake), the competing Macy’s and Gimbels department stores follow the lead of Kris Kringle, and start falling over themselves trying to help their customers… to the point of sending people across town to their competitors to get a better deal.

Now, promoting competitors to help your business is counter-intuitive, but probably only slightly more than a big box electronic retailer offering a price matching guarantee (then again, looking at the shape of big box electronic retailers nowadays…). Why do it?

With a price match guarantee, you’re offering the customer peace of mind (that they won’t get screwed if they buy from you). Similarly, by promoting a competitor, Macy’s and Gimbels are trying to be honest brokers, giving up short-term sales for goodwill and longer-term relationships.

Well, it’s just a movie, right? Not many small businesses (or any businesses, really) have pockets deep enough to make constantly sending people away a viable strategy. (It still happens on a smaller scale, where there’s professional courtesy, no direct competition, or other special circumstances. For example, a plumber who was recommended to me didn’t have the equipment for a specialized kind of work, but he referred me to someone who did. Same thing for a tax preparer who was booked up for the season.)

Still, the Miracle on 34th Street example is about being helpful, honest, and useful. So how can you do this — in a way that won’t take money out of your pocket?

Help Others, Help Yourself

Say you’re an independent bookshop or hardware store (there are still some around, right)? If your corporate behemoth rival has book signings or other events, or the big box home improvement store has do-it-yourself clinics, how about doing an online events listing that covers what those guys, as well as other people, are doing?

Sure, you want to promote your own events. But by including what’s going on outside of your place, you’re showing that you know what’s going on outside your walls (and you should know what your competitors are doing, right, particularly so you don’t schedule against it?), and you’re being useful to people by providing a comprehensive list of resources. And as a bonus, you’re using your competitors for content.

(In some ways, that last bit is similar to a strategy that some independent coffee shops are using — deliberately opening next to big chain coffee shops, to take advantage of the foot traffic and name recognition. It can work.)

Dumb Idea? Be Honest…

This particular strategy, of course, depends on what you’ve got going on, and the state of events listings in your locale.

Do you have ideas for other ways that you can leverage your competitors’ content, promote them, and become a useful content resource for customers, in a way that builds your long-term relationship with customers (and doesn’t sacrifice too much in the short-term)? Or is this just a stupid idea? Let me know in the comments…

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