AMA: MetaRouter Director of Product Marketing, Michele Nieberding 🚀 on Competitive Positioning

I hate to say it, but my answer is...it depends. I typically like using "prescheduled" customer interactions like CAB meetings as a forum to get feedback, but there are times when you need answers sooner (i.e. informing a roadmap, important beta programs, needing customer involvement for an event and/or case study). To make things more personal, I also like to follow our top advocates, partners, and CAB members on LinkedIn so that I can also celebrate and elevate their wins and share in their su ...Read More

Disseminating competitive positioning to our sales team is a strategic and ongoing process--as you likely know, there are new things popping up every day with competitors (product releases, acquisitions, partnership announcements, etc.). While I leverage a combination of comprehensive training sessions, regular updates, and interactive resources to ensure our sales team is well-versed in our product's unique value propositions, key differentiators, and competitive advantages, I also do a couple ...Read More

I am actually dealing with this right now! And there is quite a bit you can do to continue building analyst relations despite not fitting into a current Wave or MQ. Take advantage of (free) analyst briefings: Proactively reach out to Forrester and Gartner to set up briefings to let the analysts know what you product does, what major challenges you are solving, why you dont fit into a category, and what you might suggest to be considered as a new category. While they may not have a dedicated repo ...Read More

Some best practices and tools! Market Research: Competitor Analysis Tools: Leverage tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, or SimilarWeb for comprehensive competitor analysis, including website traffic, keywords, and backlink strategies. Industry Reports: Explore industry-specific reports and studies to understand market trends, challenges, and emerging opportunities. Customer Feedback: Surveys and Interviews: Conduct surveys and interviews with existing customers to understand their pain points, preferenc ...Read More

I really love using Klue as a source of truth, it does half of the updating for me.I also have a Google Spreadsheet tracker I use with a tab for each competitor and key categories like "product releases" where I link to any resources I can find (i.e. Product Showcase webinar, press release announcement) and add notes on "WHAT THAT MEANS" for our company.I really also love doing newsletters because you can look back and see what updates you shared, and what else you may need to consider discussin ...Read More