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An article I wrote for Arnoldworldwide.com
http://arn.com/#item/tempo?&_suid=1357518782819019148250154899887

We may be overlooking a key idea in marketing that’s costing our businesses millions of dollars - tempo. In chess, tempo means wasted or gained moves based on inefficient play. When you force your adversary to make a defensive move to save his king, rather than spending it capturing yours, you are gaining tempo.

In marketing, tempo is the idea of gaining or losing time and money to your competitors by making efficient or inefficient decisions. Tempo-based marketing focuses on being more efficient than these competitors, instead of worrying about individual initiatives.

Let’s say your company invests in a terrible idea, and the competition does not. You are wasting precious finite resources via budget and employee time. To beat competitors, your tempo must be superior.

How do you gain tempo in your marketing? Here are some methods:

1.) Replicate your competitors’ successes
(with slightly more efficient twists), and learn from their failures.

2.) Adopt a company-wide market-oriented approach, building products to suit consumers rather than the other way around; this will almost always out-tempo product-focused competitors.

3.) Spend a little money testing several initiatives and messages upfront.
Cherry-pick the successes.

Don’t think, “THEY HAVE AN APP! If we don’t build one, we’re losing mindshare!” You usually can’t afford wasting your turns protecting your king – just because competitors are somewhere doesn’t mean you absolutely have to be.

Instead, invest zealous fervor in efficiency and effectiveness – maybe that does actually mean building that app, but measure it first against where else you could be spending your hard-earned money.

Related links:
Replicating competitors success
Efficiency Twists
Market-oriented approach
Cherry-Pick Success
Competitive Analysis