Here’s an interesting way to measure the effectiveness of your marketing.  And you can do it in two seconds.  Simply ask this question: Does our advertising & marketing program make our competition nervous?  Or are they thinking, “this isn’t a problem for us!”?

I’ll cut right to the chase.  If they’re not nervous, you’re losing important ground.

Your single most important job as a marketer is to strike a chord in the marketplace and make people react…reshuffle their brain cells, if you will.  If you’re successful, it will certainly raise eyebrows at the competitors’ offices.  You know you’re winning when people at “the other guys” run around the office waiving your ad yelling “Did you see THIS!”

Watching the commercials during the Super Bowl, I can’t help but wonder how few competitors feel really threatened by what other advertisers spent millions to run. If you think about the four or five spots you actually remember (let alone the one or two whose products raised your interest), then imagine how much money was spent that changed nothing at all.

One of my favorite experiences came out of a campaign we created for Vivitar.  We boldly compared our client’s digital camera quality with four major competing brands, visually demonstrating the quality of each camera using the same subject.  Shortly after the campaign began, a letter arrived from the attorney of one of the other brands we featured demanding details on how we set up the shots.  Gladly, we sent them the documentation and that was the last we heard from them.  On the other hand, not surprisingly, sales of Vivitar cameras shot up.

More than once, I’ve had the joyous experience of actually listening to our clients’ competitors complaining about our clients’ campaigns (their not realizing that we created them in the first place).  It’s a lovely sound.

If your marketing  is really doing the job, your competition is saying things like “that’s not fair,” “this is making us look bad,” “we need to ramp up our own campaign,” and “why don’t WE do stuff like that!”

What kills a good marketing program is expectedness, complacency, just being good enough.  But if you think the competition is taking notice of your marketing efforts and they don’t like it, you’re on the right path and you dare not stray at your peril.

Take the two-second test and decide if those who covet your customers are saying bad things about you in their hallways, or are high-fiving themselves all the way to the bank at your expense.