AMA: Barracuda Networks Product Marketing Director, Olesia Klevchuk on Competitive Positioning

Positioning isn't about being better, it's about being the best fit for a specific problem.   Here how I would approach this:   Try to identify the ‘real enemy’. This usually is not a competitor, it's a status quo. In my world of cyber security it could be manual workflows or alert fatigue. So, we would position against the pain of the old way. Then you want to find an unfair advantage. I will look for one technical truth that our engineers built that will solve a CISO’s biggest headaches. If ev ...Read More

That's a classic arm race, and honestly if they are copying you, you are clearly the one setting the pace. In the industries where feature parity often happens fast, you can't win on the checklist.   You need to own the narrative it's not just the spec. If the competitor copies ‘a single pane of glass dashboard’ don't fight over the UI. Focus on unique data science or philosophy behind it. They can copy the button but they cannot easily copy the architecture that makes the button meaningful. You ...Read More

I don't believe in overcomplicating it with 50-page decks. I focus on three main pillars First, is the ‘So What?’ or identifying customer pain point. I start by interviewing sales and looking at that closed-lost data. What are they actually losing to? It's usually not a feature, it's often a feeling or a workflow gap. Second, I will look for ‘Only Us’ statement. I will list out, let's say 3 competitors, and find the one thing that we do that they literally cannot claim without lying. Those will ...Read More

In my world of cyber security pricing is often guarded like a state secret so you have to be a bit of detective. I generally avoid the mystery shopper route, it's messy and often unreliable. Here is what I do instead:   The win/loss debrief is a gold mine. I don't just look at the CRM, I do talk to our sales reps. How do our competitors quote? How do they discount? Do they sell per user or per device? Getting an idea of a pricing structure is often more valuable than the final number. The partne ...Read More

That's a great question because people often use them interchangeably.   Market intelligence is a macro view. It’s about total landscape or total addressable market, shifting regulations, emerging buying personas or various economic trends.   Competitive intelligence is your tactical, micro level playbook. It's a deep dive into specific competitors, their pricing, feature sets, win loss data, sales pitches. It answers questions like how we beat Company X in head-to-head deal tomorrow.   Markets ...Read More