AMA: Narvar Head Of Product Marketing, Jeffrey Vocell on Competitive Positioning

Oftentimes the day-to-day of changes can be "noisy", so try to not get too caught-up in the everyday changes. If a competitor is having a major product launch, or doing a complete rebrand -- then absolutely spend time digging in and processing the news and how it impacts your company/position. But overall, I'd carve out regular time weekly and monthly to digest the noise -- and ensure you earmark time in your calendar for any of those high-profile announcements. That way you don't get pulled in to the day to day changes and can focus on executing at a high-level. Good luck!

First of all, it needs to be rooted in the day-to-day realities of sales and the conversations their having. If Product Marketing is coming up with competitive intel in a vacuum without input from Sales, then it will naturally fall flat. As you should do with positioning, make Sales a key part of how you create competitive intelligence and what it needs to include. Most great sales reps and managers will already be doing some of this themselves, so start by learning what their doing. If you have a tool like Gong, go through calls to see what they're saying and using and talk with reps to learn how it's working. If you come across a really powerful piece of insight, you can embed a snippet from a call directly in your battlecard so Sales can hear it from one of their own. Lastly a few tactical suggestions: * Root the battlecard, snippets, and intel in their language, not any 'fluffy' language. It will make it more turnkey as well. * Take any comparisons real users have made and leverage them. Prospects won't believe you if you just say "We're better! I promise." But taking someone's real words/voice can be incredibly powerful.

There are ton's of different templates available, a quick Google search will turn up dozens of positioning templates. This is a pretty good one I've used as a foundation previously. What's most important though is adapting any template to the needs of your organization. The example I linked above lacks a tie-in to mission and vision, which can be useful components -- especially if you are a part of a multi-product company. Overall, I think it's important to include some key pieces such as: * Mission / Vision * Category * Competition * Persona * Uniqe differentiation * Challenges * Value/Benefits Hope this helps!

Love this question! I'd think about it in terms of outcomes, and effectiveness. So I'd look at metrics like: * Competitive Win Rates * Usage - To be clear, I like to look at this through the lens of whether the usage of a particular piece of competitive content is impacting the sales cycle and not just pure usage of content. * Product Feedback/Usage * Retention Depending on the size and stage of your company, you may also have things like: * Competitive SEO - If you use a tool lke SEMRush then you'll be able to track competitive search positions and rankings compared to where you are, and how it's trending over time. * Brand / SOV - This is very high-level, but if you work for a company that is well-known or intently focused on building brand it's a metric that is likely tracked. Since you mentioned your company tracks every project I think this can also depend on the maturity of your CI program. But work backwards and start with the outcome you're trying to drive, and then determine what needs to be measured to achieve that objective.

Yes, I believe in tieing positioning up to overall company positioning. The way I've described it before to other team members is it's a scaffold -- the foundation is the company positioning and messaging, and stemming from that is platform positioning and messaging, and then product positioning and messaging. These all should latter up to the overall company positioning. As with everything, there are caveats -- if you're a part of a company that is making a huge shift, or entering a completley new market, then messaging naturally won't ladder up perfectly but that's more of a exception and not the rule. Consistency comes from ensuring core concepts and messages from your company positioning carry through all your platform and product positioning. Tactically speaking, this can mean ensuring that it's a part of your positioning template so it's visibile and very clear if it does start to stray. In the early days of HubSpot, we were focused on Inbound Marketing, and our positioning around new capabilities all laddered up to that pillar of Inbound Marketing. The creative and differentiated pieces are the two most difficult -- but also two of the most rewarding as well. There's no prescriptive approach for this, but make sure you consider other opinions that are quite different than your own, look at market data, and consider the way your telling the company story. Most product marketing still tell a story that ties into problem/solution, and in a crowded market, that leads to a lot of companies having very similar positioning and messaging. Instead think about the way your customers/prospects lives are being impacted and changing and start your story there. It sounds simple, but it produces really remarkable change in the way you position your company and product.

This is arguably the hardest part of positioning. In my experience, it has to start before you really start drafting positioning and as you're doing research. First, talk with a few folks from your sales and CS teams and get a sense of any pain points they're hearing in the market. Gaining early buy-in from Sales will pave the path to making adoption a whole lot easier once positing is written. Next, once you have positioning drafted get feedback from the same group of individuals from Sales and CS. Ideally you can start to have one or two people even start to test early messaging in calls -- and if you have a technology like Gong or Chorus then you can get direct feedback. As you go through the positioning approval process there should be executives involved, and there should be buy-in from them to help push adoption. Lastly, you can drive accountability by rolling out new positioning and enablement assets with a quiz. Getting all leaders bought-in ahead of time will mean they can help make it a priority across their teams, which will ultimately drive adoption. I know that sounds like a lot, but believe me, it's way easier to start with cross-functional involvement early versus trying to get everyone on-board late in the process and you're up against a deadline.

Good question. As with everything, a lot of the answer is it depends. If you have a customer marketing team, I hope they're doing some level of "air traffic control" and have a sense of which customers are being reached out to with specific asks (i.e. beta requests, market research, company speaking opportunity, etc). If not, I'd work with Sales and CS to ensure you're talking to the right customers, and on the right cadence. Come-up with a list of customers you're going to reach out to and collaboratively share it with them ahead of time, and then set the appropriate expectations with the customer.

I think competitive is one aspect of overall pricing and packaging, but it shouldn't solely dictate how you price or package your product. There are exceptions of course, and if your competitor is the defacto market standard then aligning it more closely to competitors is likely necessary. Overall, focus your pricing and packaging on your customer, target segments, and unique differentiation. Then ensure it's not wildly off from competitors. A tool like Klue or Crayon can also help you track when competitors make updates to their pricing page (if there is one public-facing), so you can regularly keep track of any changes.

Great question! I'll start with saying Klue has a phenomenal blog post on this topic I'd encourage you to read. But to your question, most will try to differentiate off features. In most cases this will lead to a conversation about value -- and in a crowded market is really difficult to truly differentiate in this case. There are some tactical things you can pursue to drive differentiation: * Social Proof * Lean-in to aspects of your solution that customers rave about! I've seen this be everythign from the sales team/process, to customer support team, implementation, education, and more. I call all those out just to say it's important to think outside our product as well. * Competitive content - while it's tactical, if you have a comparison page it enables you to tell a story about how your different -- and not just about features. * Brand - This is the ultimate differentiation, but it's not an overnight fix. Consider what's unique about the attributes of your company, and lean-in to building your brand around that which will give prospects a clear view of your company. Beyond the above, it's really about storytelling and messaging. Instead of just thinking about how your product is different from compeition, think about the changes your prospects are experecing in their day-to-day and tell a compelling story around that -- and then educate them on how to win, with your product.

I think there's a few different aspects of this: 1. Alignment -- There needs to be alignment between your feature and overall product positioning and messaging. If you are sprinting towards a major launch of a notable feature then it should focus on how that capability naturally solves key challenges in the market for prospective buyers. That said, launch and core product positioning shouldn't be different (for the same product line). A launch is an opportunity to drive momentum -- and you can use different messaging to do that, but the positioning should stay the same. 2. Positioning vs. Messaging -- This is talked about all the time in Product Marketing circles. I do view them as different, and positioning is an internal resource that frames the market, the buyer, and where your solution fits. Whereas messaging is the external-facing output of positioning -- it's what prospects will read in a blog post, or on your product page. 3. Timing/Goal -- It goes without saying that we all have a limited amount of time each day, and the vast majority of PMMs I speak with have a million priorities. So timing, and what your short (and long) term goals are play a factor in this too. While it's tangential to your question, looking at this through a hierarchy I think makes sense: 1. Company Positioning: This should be the highest level of messaging for the overall company/brand. There should be at least 3 stories that tie up to this: brand narrative, financial narrative, executive leadership narrative. 2. Platform Positioning: I use the term "Platform" here because, especially in most software or SaaS companies there are multiple product lines that tie-up to the overall platform. If this is the case for your company, there should be distinct platform positioning. 3. Product Positioning: This is for overall product lines. During my time at HubSpot, this would have been Marketing Hub, or CMS Hub, as an example. 4. Product Launches: Again, this shouldn't change overall product positioning (unless it's an all-new product of course), but it can be a timely message in the market. For at least the first 3, and really all of them, I recommend putting them on a central resource available to the company like Confluence/Guru/GDrive/Etc. By doing so that hierarchy is clear and all customer-facing teams have an easy way to get talk tracks, and supporting assets they need.

There's so many tools out in the market today, so here are a few recommendations of categories: * Surveys - SurveyMonkey, TypeForm, Qualtrics * Dashboards - Looker, Sisense, Etc * Market Data - Statista, MarketingCharts * Analysts/Review Sites - Gartner, Forrester, IDC, G2, Trust Radius There's plenty of others -- but these are a great foundation to build market research. Beyond these, there are programs you can gain a ton of additional data like closed won/loss interviews, competitive intelligence, product usage data, and more. The real value, in my opinion, comes from the mix of these sources and data. 

Put in a place that's easy for them to find, and be consistent. While that's oversimplified, it really comes down to that. Sales will look for competitive positioning as they need it, so having the materials in a place they can easily access and consistently get updates is the central part of ensuring it's used. There are of course a whole bunch of things we can layer on-top of this -- internal competitive newsletter, closed won/loss data sharing, and more. The internal newsletter can be a great way to provide regular updates and build that consistency of directing folks back to the same resources. One last thing to mention -- in some highly competitive environments, focusing on a particular competitor (per month, or per quarter, or whichever frequency works for your org) can be helpful. You can hold a "deep dive" session on that competitor, especially if there's been a big refresh of intelligence or updates on that competitor it can be a good way to reset and disseminate key information.

Great question. First of all, make sure you set expectations up-front that results will take a while to see. Overall count the incremental wins, and show the milestones your crossing as a way to share that progress. Have a great conversation with an analyst where they told you a key piece of insight? Share that amongst your executives and PMM team. Also, make sure you -- or your executive team -- are regularly talking with analysts. If you're responsible for AR, or have an AR team, you should be meeting with various analysts (not just the core group who drive reports!) regularly. As you have company momentum news such as funding, crossing a customer threshold milestone, going public, or product launches, ensure you share that with them and get their input. Analyst Relations is very much a marathon and not a sprint -- so embrace that, get to know your core analysts, talk with them very regularly, keep them updated, and report all that progress internally.

A few key documents that you should have: * Research Document - For me, this has always been internal and been a way for me to store insights, data, or any resources on a competitor -- or aggregate set of competitors. This doc is never shared broadly and is just used as a starting point to collect information. * Competitive Battlecard - This should be the central resource where everything your sales and CS team need lives. * Competitive Messaging Spreadsheet - I like to create a compettiive spreadsheet that tracks all the key H1s and messaging for homepage and/or core product page in one place so I can compare across competitors. Hopefully that helps! 

There's a lot to look at, but here's an overview: Company & Product Insight: * Company Stage/Size/Growth - This speaks for itself, but where is the company, what size, and how quickly are they growing. Ideally you should have a sense of the company size you prefer so you know where you fit. * Social Proof - Case Studies, and reviews on sites like G2 and TrustRadius are priceless * Analyst Reports/Position * Product Usage & NPS * Values & Culture - Not only what the company itself says their values are, but what do employees say on sites like Glassdoor? * Financial Metrics - These differ quite a bit based on size/stage of company, but based on your own comfortability with risk and security, ensure the company is stable. Leader Insight: * Who is this role reporting to? What do they care about and how are they measured? * Is this someone you can learn from, or help you take that next step in your career? * What do others across the organization think of this person? Team Insight: * What does the team look like today, and how is it structured? * How is the relationship with Product/Sales? * What are any recent shared OKRs between Product and Sales, and how did the team perform on them? * What is team budget/hiring plans? * What is everyone's career aspirations, and where are they today on that journey? This is a fairly simplistic list, but as a leader, I'm looking for the right balance of opportunity and challenge between a lot of the above. Ideally in an exciting market there's a ton of potential in. 

It's incredibly important! Not just the individual win/loss/churn reports, but aggregate data as well can be a foundation or validation for decision making. In past roles I've used this data to focus programs around: * Competitive Intelligence - This one is obvious, but one key output has been more intense focus around how to win against specific competitors. * Content - Hearing why some prospects chose a competitor and the picture they paint can be exteremly useful. It shoudl spur ideas for positioning, and content alike. But historically I've used it to fuel blog posts, webinars, and different content for products that have directly impacted new sales, and retention. * Product Adoption - If you know a competitor is talking specifically about an aspect of your product, ensure you drive adoption (assuming it's core to your product and helps retain customers).