AMA: MURAL Senior Director, Product Marketing, Sean Lauer on Competitive Positioning
February 16 @ 10:00AM PT
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👋 Sean Lauer
👋 Sean Lauer (Charlotte, NC)
💼 VP Marketing at Instruqt. Previously Senior Director of Product Marketing at Mural and Global Product Marketing at Twitter.
🧪 Currently deep in a messaging refresh and loving the mix of strategy, customer insight, and wordsmithing
🤝 Always happy to chat: marketing, product marketing, positioning and messaging, GTM strategy, technical marketing, sales enablement, customer education, and product strategy
🍦 Favorite ice cream: One Sweet Whirled (RIP, Ben & Jerry’s… bring it back)
💼 VP Marketing at Instruqt. Previously Senior Director of Product Marketing at Mural and Global Product Marketing at Twitter.
🧪 Currently deep in a messaging refresh and loving the mix of strategy, customer insight, and wordsmithing
🤝 Always happy to chat: marketing, product marketing, positioning and messaging, GTM strategy, technical marketing, sales enablement, customer education, and product strategy
🍦 Favorite ice cream: One Sweet Whirled (RIP, Ben & Jerry’s… bring it back)
Instruqt VP of Marketing | Formerly Mural, Twitter, Anheuser-Busch InBev • 3y
One of the key things to consider with any information provided to a sales team is making sure you answer two questions: Why does it matter? What should they do with it?...
712 Views
1 request
Instruqt VP of Marketing | Formerly Mural, Twitter, Anheuser-Busch InBev • 3y
The most important resource for competitive positioning is battle cards. It's the best summary and most actionable document (or group of documents) that can drive impact ...
719 Views
1 request
What metric, goal or KPI can you put on providing competitive intelligence to the company or product teams?
I work in a company that measures the impact of all projects, but admittedly this is a difficult area to track. Would love to any suggestions/thoughts.
Instruqt VP of Marketing | Formerly Mural, Twitter, Anheuser-Busch InBev • 3y
Teams should be tracking win/loss rates vs specific competitors. This information is most easily gathered and tracked via the sales team (or possibly solutions eng) and s...
601 Views
1 request
Instruqt VP of Marketing | Formerly Mural, Twitter, Anheuser-Busch InBev • 3y
Ideally, your narrative should actually be doing the heavy lifting when it comes to differentiation. Features can easily be copied. As this question states, it often lead...
720 Views
1 request
Instruqt VP of Marketing | Formerly Mural, Twitter, Anheuser-Busch InBev • 3y
Mural's PMM team has a dedicated team member for competitive intelligence, which helps us stay on top of our very competitive space. We also utilize Crayon to not only su...
555 Views
1 request
How do you obtain competitive intelligence on a competitor's product that has very little public-facing marketing around it?
I'm about to just call and ask them if they still sell it.
Instruqt VP of Marketing | Formerly Mural, Twitter, Anheuser-Busch InBev • 3y
That's definitely a challenge! There are a few things you could try to gain more insights: Utilize your sales team to ask about a competitor in discussions with prospect...
619 Views
1 request
What's your approach to competitive differentiation?
How does this inform your core messaging, how do you enable sales to understand what makes you different/better, how do you know if it's working with your target buyers?
Instruqt VP of Marketing | Formerly Mural, Twitter, Anheuser-Busch InBev • 3y
The most important aspect of competitive differentiation is that it's authentic and resonates with the customer and/or user. From a core messaging standpoint, you first...
474 Views
1 request
What constitutes a competitor, and what is the goal you have in mind when you conduct competitor analysis?
What is your philosophy when it comes to competitors?
Instruqt VP of Marketing | Formerly Mural, Twitter, Anheuser-Busch InBev • 3y
A competitor is anything that can be substituted for the value that your product offers. Sometimes, that's a product with a very similar feature set. Sometimes, it's a pr...
647 Views
1 request
Instruqt VP of Marketing | Formerly Mural, Twitter, Anheuser-Busch InBev • 3y
There's nothing that says gathering intel in standard ways isn't ethical or fair. There are definitely some tactics that might straddle the line and a few that go way ove...
1078 Views
2 requests