AMA: Unbabel Former VP of Product Marketing, Sarah Din on Competitive Positioning

I honestly customize the framework for each company I work for, but over the year’s I've built my own since I never found anything existing that I really loved. If you want an example, message me and I can share an example. Competitive positioning is always part of the initial messaging development work, and then I do always have a section in my messaging docs on competitors to talk about competitors at a glance (and unique differentiators), which then links to more detailed competitive intel do ...Read More

Most people talk about positioning and messaging under the same breath and interchangeably, but in fact, these are two very different things that have inter-dependencies. Positioning is contextual. It’s simply about your ownable market position. The goal is to answer “how are you unique?” And “how do you want to be perceived in the market?” In practice, this is your core value proposition - and you can find a plethora of templates online for this. Messaging on the other hand is about how you com ...Read More

As with any other sales content, find out how your specific sales team likes to consume content. This will give you an idea of the format, as well as the channels in which to share this information. This will also depend on your company culture. In my personal experience it's important to do the following: Make it easy to find - so have a centralized location where you can point people to. Share the links, and share it again, and again over time. Have quick, TL;DR versions of all your competitiv ...Read More

I like to keep these simple, and just use a single value proposition slide. Especially when it’s for an executive team. Here are the basic things to include: Who is our audience? (customer segment) What challenges do they face? (what is the need and the cost of not meeting that need?) What is our solution? (a description of your offering) How do we solve their problem? (Solution/benefit statement) What makes us unique? (Your top 3-5 core differentiators) Alternatively, if you want something more ...Read More

Get your executive team aligned and bought in first - because you need them to champion this to the rest of the org, and to set the precedence by using your messaging regularly as they talk about the company. When you create new messaging - make sure you do internal activation in the form of training or some sort of a rollout. Make it fun, gamify it and do it over time so it sticks. Create Quizzes, give away prizes. Create content in different formats - docs, videos, intranet content, printed ma ...Read More

This really depends on the actual goal of a CI program, but here are a few ideas: For the sales team: Competitive win rates (pre and post intel) Sales confidence on competitive pitching (This is something you can measure using surveys at a regular cadence like quarterly) For the product team: Feature parity if that is what you are focused on Competitive differentiation - if you really need a metric you can create a percentage scale and see how that changes over time For the marketing team If you ...Read More

Depends on how competitive your market is. You can create a list of competitors and create segments based on different variables that are important for your product or business. For instance direct competitors vs indirect competitors, Or competitors by vertical, or competitors by use case, etc. Secondly, If you have a LOT of competitors, I would do a prioritization exercise to identify the top 3-5 that you track more regularly vs others that you passively track, as needed. For instance, prioriti ...Read More

That is a great question! I like to have both. The core messaging should be for your overall company and product - this is the foundational messaging for how to talk about your product (and perhaps even different parts of your product depending on product complexity) Then as you develop and launch new features, your launch GTM plan should also have launch-specific messaging that you align your entire GTM team around. As you develop new messaging for each launch, make sure you go back and either ...Read More

I believe competitive research should always be part of the process when you develop your core messaging, but it’s important to not get too hung up on your competitors, you can easily lose sight of what your own customers care about. (Also, who is to say that their messaging is better than others?) I usually build a competitive positioning matrix where I will have at least 2 rows for each competitor: “We help you”, and “so you can” (But use what version works best for you)--- and then go through ...Read More

Here are some ways I've tackled this with my teams: It is important to establish a cadence for your competitive research. How often is actually achievable based on your resources/bandwidth? Do you have a dedicated CI person on the team or is your team smaller where this is part of your overall scope? and how often is good enough? This will vary based on your internal structure and org needs. Do some passive research. Use Alerts and RSS feeds. Sign up for competitors’ marketing newsletters or blo ...Read More