Carista and OBDeleven - Notes from the Coalface of Business.
Quick Note: Most of my blog posts relate to digital media, who uses it and to what ends.
Over the past few months we've been getting quite competitive in our sphere. (Check August/September).
This sometimes makes the competition a little edgy. In the case of one of our competitors, it is proving a little too much. When your top ranking paid keyword is the name of our tool, we've got you worried, right?
When your team goes on YouTube trolling our product (on your own product review videos), getting caught doing it and removing comments when caught in the act... not a good look.
Take this lightweight recent YouTube comments example (sorry for the image quality)...
We don't mind the approach, it's quite common in business (and among ex girlfriends/boyfriends). Our tack is to compete on the overall quality of our product.
• We work with a wider range of *supported vehicles (this gap will get bigger in the near future).
• We offer an open architecture based adapter (widely compatible).
• Our tool works on iOS and Android.
Overall, we feel there is huge potential in the type of product we are bringing to market. There is plenty of space for competition. For the customer, it widens choice and offers alternatives...if anything, the fact that our competition is so worried, gives us more faith in the overall quality of our own product.
What you've got to watch for is "who" is saying "what" about your product (and why).
As of the date of publication, we've gotten 800 reviews on Amazon (US) and over 500 reviews on Amazon (UK) ...the numbers are quite consistent, actually.
One of the premier advantages of new media over old media is exactly this type of digital listening. You can tap into your user base, competitors and strategic partners. Using tools like social mention, similarweb, hypestat, who is, or plain old desk research, allows you to dig up enough information to make valid business decisions.
In our case we are not going to go head to head and compete in a bidding war over keywords, it makes no sense strategically. The world is too big, the overall market too large. The potential market size is still open for discussion. The life cycle stage of our product is very early.
To conclude this ramble. Do we have enough information to make decisions, yes. What is the decision? That is based on our strategic goals. Can we infer and interpret the moves of the competition? Sure. Job done.
In the words of the sage.. "Choices are the hinges of destiny." - Pythagoras (570 BC - 495 BC), Greek philosopher
It helps to oil those hinges with good quality information.
References
https://www.similarweb.com/website/caristaapp.com?competitors=obdeleven.com
https://www.similarweb.com/app/google-play/com.voltasit.obdeleven/statistics?competitors=com.prizmos.carista
https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/global-obd-aftermarket-industry-to-surpass-15bn-by-2024-global-market-insights-inc-691869591.html
Note: https://caristaapp.com/vehicles - *always check to see what your particular model is supported for before buying the Carista adapter.
https://www.bebee.com/producer/@dphilpott/carista-and-obdeleven-notes-from-the-coalface-of-business