AMA: AlertMedia Vice President Product Marketing, Harsha Kalapala on Competitive Positioning

I dont think we should ever mention competitors directly in our messaging. Sure, you can address it directly in response if a prospect brings them up. But proactively naming competitors puts you in a defensive position and gives them undue attention. This usually doesn't work to our advantage. You could position it more generally like: Unlike (category descriptor) platforms, (our product) helps you solve for x. There are a handful of good frameworks out there. But I found that none of them perfe ...Read More

Staying in touch with customers/propsects directly is not an option for product marketers, IMO. There are passive ways to do it by being a listener - listen to sales/CS calls, attend talks by your audience on relevant topics, follow notable people on linkedin and read the content they are posting or engaging with. In my experience the best insights come from the most unexpected conversations involving customers and prospects. So my team always invests in time engaging with our audience every cha ...Read More

Keep it simple and practical. We use a simple battle card format to pull together the most essential details you need at your fingertips to enable competitive conversations. We host it on Seismic so it is easy to search for keywords and find the battle cards. We also do specific training sessions for tier 1 and tier 2 competitors (described above). I’ve also used slack channels to create a conversation around competition and tackle fringe situations effectively with group input. Again, those peo ...Read More

There are a few types of competitors to think about: Tier 1: Prime Competition - Those who compete for the same dollars for a very similar product. You often end up in feature battles with them and eat each other’s lunch. They look very similar to your offering in the eyes of prospects. They end up copying your features or vice versa. Tier 2: Patrial overlap - They have one or more similar products, common verticals, or solve the same problem in different ways. They are sometimes point solutions ...Read More

Competitive positioning is a key component of defining core messaging. If we sit down and come up with copy on how to best describe our offerings, a key step is to compare that against how competitors describe themselves. You’ll likely be hit with an unpleasant surprise that about half your copy has already been used directly or indirectly by competitors. Some words might be well-adapted lexicons that prospects associate competitors with. Developing your positioning and messaging without this ke ...Read More

I am assuming this is sales, account management, or customer success teams. It is an understandable concern - especially in large enterprise situations. There seems to be too much at stake to risk with someone you aren't familiar with. It can also be a factor of company culture - which is unfortunate when that creates a blocker for information flow. The first step is to build a relationship with those stakeholders. Let them trust your judgment and align with your motives - which, in the end, sho ...Read More

There are many ways to stay on top of competitive intel. If you have the budget and a clear use case, use a tool like Klue to help gather intel, and disperse it in your existing channels. Other ways I always used are the following: Use your frontline teams - open up communication channels with your sales and customer success teams. They can gather invaluable information every single day from direct conversations. Use gong - we live in unprecedented times of access to data and insights. Set alert ...Read More