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Competitive Positioning
Competitive Positioning
14 answers
Head of Product Marketing at Modern Treasury | Formerly Twilio
To start I'd say thorough competitive research is the foundation of great
product marketing, so it's great that your company is investing in it. It's
really important for the PMM that owns a product to be an expert on both direct
and indirect competitors. Competitive research shouldn't happen in a vaccuum —
it needs to be informed by persona research and the long term vision and product
strategy. Especially at the early stages of a new product, the competitive
landscape can seem vast and intimidating. Knowing what your core personas care
about and where your product and engineering team is ...more
Director of Product Marketing at Vectra AI
Sales and customers will be your most vital partners for this task. They will have likely have had multiple run-ins with your competitors. As a result, they will give you an excellent high-level understanding of competitive pitches, pricing, what attracted customers to them, and how the market, in general, perceives them. When you want to go deeper on a technical level, SEs, TMEs, and other PMs will be able to assist you with a feature-to-feature comparison, but keep in mind to approach the problem from multiple angles to get a better picture.
Head of Product Marketing at Prove
The definition of "Extensive competitive product research" may be different for different people. I suggest asking the CEO and Product / Engineering teams the kind of questions they are looking to answer. Sometimes the high level market research you can get from a 3rd party will not be enough, and you will need to get creative to get the information needed via surveys, primary research or other methods. My best advise here is to define the task in more detail to undertand what people are expecting.
Chief Analytics Officer at MarketingStat - Survey insights. Your value
The industry sector you deal with may lead to different suggestions. In general,
however, “product research” may suggest you are working on a new product launch
or re-staging. In such cases, begin with the framework, consider the research
tools, and then move to the operating part of the research.
The framework may be the:
- Product Strategy, for products bought for what they do (like pharmaceuticals,
chemicals, engineering, and others)
and/or the
- Copy Strategy, for products characterized by how they look, work, taste, or
smell (like most consumer goods, washing products, cosmetics, e...more
Director of Product Marketing at dbt Labs
We all miss the mark here. I'm not even sure I would trust a PMM that says they
don't struggle with this! You can stack the deck though, to show that you're
exploring every possible avenue:
1. Consider a competitive monitoring solution like Crayon. I've used them in the
past and even if they can't dig up things like exact product pricing, they will
aggregate signals in market like a executive job posting in EMEA that shows
they're about to expand internationally, or a change to their pricing page where
they've dropped a freemium trial, or removed a feature, or a shift in homepage
messagin...more
Head of Product Marketing at Forethought
My first recommendation would be to make sure you understand exactly what
exactly your stakeholders are wanting to know (and why). Are they looking at
making product decisions based on this information? Adjusting the pricing?
Refining the messaging? Knowing the strategic goals behind the request will help
you know what types of information to search for.
Next, frame your search by putting together a template for a product comparison
matrix comparing your product with each of your top competitors' products (I
recommend doing this in a spreadsheet where you can add additional information
an...more
Director of Product Marketing at Culture Amp
This is definitely tricky since getting in-depth product intel requires intimate
knowledge about your competitors products. One technique some companies employ
is mystery shopping research where you hire a researcher to pose as a buyer, but
your organization may have a stance against this type of research. You can
always look through review sites like G2 to see how your products are compared
against top competitors products. But what I've found to be most effective is
actually spending time talking to your sales, account management, and customer
success teams. Prospects and existing custome...more
Head of Product Marketing, Core Product at Gusto
I’d clarify upfront what they are hoping to achieve with the exercise. Is it for
internal knowledge? To publish competitive checklists on your website? What will
it mean for them to know how your tech stacks up in the market? Clarifying and
getting alignment on how the information will be used and what constitutes
success upfront will help you hit the mark. I find it helpful to remind
stakeholders that we should be evaluating the product and competitors through
the lens of value, not feature checklists. Do you have data on what features
your target market cares about most that you can layer...more
Director of Enterprise Product Marketing at Amplitude
Not sure what mark you're missing. But your CEO and product/eng team are probably looking for (1) an overview of the space, where everyone is going (2) highlighting a few players and going deep dive into why they're building it and who they are building for. [I would hire a secret shopper for the second part]
Director of Product Marketing at Wealthsimple
If your'e missing the mark, take a step back. Make sure you have a clear
understanding of the business challenge you're trying to solve (why do we need
this research, what decisions will it help drive).
I will share a tangable example of how we approached "how does our tech stack
up"
At a previous company we were evaluating the decsion to build or acquire to fill
a gap in our offering. The first step we took was to be clear on who our target
audience was (if we invest in this, who will care and does this align to our
business goals). We then outlined various jobs to be done partnering clo...more
VP, Industry Solutions at Okta
The best competitive research I've seen goes beyond the competitor's website, press releases and YouTube videos. They might include competitor customer interviews and tailored sales demos. I've personally worked with great small businesses and consultants who are experts in doing this analysis and research. If you have a little budget, I'd recommend that path.
Product Marketing at Fire TV (Smart TVs) at Amazon
Here are some tips based on my eperience:
1. Keeping up with competitive product research, especially in tech, is hard:
The tech space evolves at a rapid pace and your research can become
absolute/stale within few weeks. Provide competitive intelligence back to your
CEO/Product teams at an agreed upon cadence.
2. Try to templatize your findings. You will likely find your data on various
product pages, press announcements and internet in general. Following a common
template where it's easier for your audience to see this data consolidate at
once place is very valuable.
3. Include your Po...more
Head of Product Marketing, Cisco Meraki at Cisco | Formerly Tellme Networks, Microsoft, Box, Vera, Scout RFP, and Sisu Data, to name a few.
I think this one just dropped in. Let's do it live!
My gut reaction is: If you're being asked to do "extensive competitive
research," something is broken. And you should say no, gracefully. It's very
difficult, if not impossible to learn how to win in a market by looking at a
competitive product from your (biased) POV.
If your CEO/founder/prouct team doesn't understand what problem they're solving
for a customer and where they have a unique differentiator, you're not going to
get that answer from a teardown.
If you want, hit me up with a DM here or on Linkedin. Would be happy to ...more
VP Marketing at PopSQL | Formerly Matterport, WeWork, Google, Mulesoft, Box, Salesforce
There's no silver bullet for this. You want to bake competitive research into
everything you do and have your antennae out. The cool thing about product
marketing is that done right, you have a unique vantage point. You are the
closest members of your team to customer conversastions, product conversations
as well as what analysts and influencers think of you. So you have to synthesize
those inputs. Take and share notes on an ongoing basis and then summarize
findings in battlecards, competitive dashboards, win/loss analysis. Bottom line:
Competitive Intelligence is a full time job.
Compe...more
5 answers
Head of Product Marketing at Retool
Most teams are protective of their clients for a reason. Perhaps they're worried
about promises made to the client. Maybe they have a really important sales
conversation coming up. Maybe the customer just experienced leadership changes
and the account team is trying to win the new leader over.
In my experience, building context and clear communication are critical to
eventually having open access to all customers. Get informed on the customer
before making sweeping asks. What can you learn from your CRM or internal notes
or dashboards that can help your peers feel like you are not just c...more
Director, Head of Product Marketing at Webflow
Great question! I think it all starts with how you approach the conversation with that internal group. Building out a "walking deck" that explains my goals, intentions and the potential program is a great way to lower the fear of other teams. It also helps to bring those stakeholders along the journey as you build out that deck - ask them questions - what do they wish they knew about their customers, what could be improved across product, marketing, sales, etc. Once you can identify the stakeholder group's goals, you can build that into your plan and show an opportunity.
Product & Instructor Marketing, Director at Udemy
Always assume best intent. Start there. Often times people want to help, but
there are other things going on; there may be nuances you have not yet
considered which your stakeholder is weighing carefully. It's important to dig
in to see where the resistance may be coming from and get your stakeholders
support against the goal itself - even if the means to achieve that goal may
change.
Listen carefully to your stakeholder and treat them as a subject matter expert
when it comes to their clients. Try to deeply understand their concerns. Share
your purpose, how it supports company objectives, ...more
Head of Product Marketing, Cisco Meraki at Cisco | Formerly Tellme Networks, Microsoft, Box, Vera, Scout RFP, and Sisu Data, to name a few.
Oof, tough situation. It's very hard to navigate these situations, and tougher
to give advice without context into why that group might be protective. Often,
if you take an open mind in and ask, you'll learn that there are good reasons
for this. Then you'll have to adapt what you want to learn.
(If you want, DM me with some more context and I'll try and answer 1:1).
But, I'd say if you're not getting access, the first thing to work on is that
internal trust across teams. They may have been burned before. It might be a
very sensitive topic to customers. That context will help you navi...more
Product Marketing at Intercom | Formerly Glassdoor, Prophet, Kraft
Interesting! I think it's always best to acknwoledge your stakeholder groups
concerns. They're probably mostly worried about the following 1) overwhelming a
client with too many asks and requests/wasting their time 2) jeopardizing a
clients renewal or upsell that's in process and 3) signing up for more work
themselves to coordinate your research. These are really fair concerns but you
also need to do your research! Here's an example of a note that I would send
that stakeholder to address all of the concerns above and ask them to help you
identify customers so you're respecting their concern...more
3 answers
Senior Director, Product Marketing at Twilio
The outcome you are targeting with your competitive research plays a role in the
efficacy of your research method. So have the outcome in mind before you start,
that way you will already be on the path to success!
Competitive positioning - There are plenty of tools around like Klue, that
scrape the web and sources data and information about your competitors. But you
will need to add color and context based on your specific differentiation. You
may also want to do some primary research on your competitors here too, look
around their website, documentation, and you may even want to sign up f...more
Sr. Director, Product Marketing at productboard
I’ve found the top 3 sources of competitive research to be:
* Peer review sites. G2 and other review sites are the best source of
information because it comes straight from the users. Even though most
reviews will be positive, pay close attention to the low star reviews and
what customers say in the dislike section within the positive reviews. This
is where you’ll find your kill points.
* Competitors’ content. Deep dive into what they post on their website -
videos, guides, documentation, case studies, blog posts, etc. Some
competitors disclose all the technical details...more
Product Marketing at Intercom | Formerly Glassdoor, Prophet, Kraft
It really depends on a few factors: time, resources and who the competitive
research helps. I would answer these questions to help you gauge how deep you
go. There are entire PMMs dedicated to competitive research and you may not have
that type of time/resource so you need to determine the level of effort you put
into this.
* Time - is this an extremely urgent question that needs to be answered in the
next week, three weeks, 6 weeks, 12 weeks?
* Resource- do you have a budget, if so, how much is it? Can I do this myself
or do I need an agency because it has to be run across several...more
7 answers
VP of Marketing at Ambition
It depends on the competitive dynamics in your market. Are you the market leader
or a new emerging alternative? What are the important buying factors in your
market and with your buyers? Is price a primary buying consideration (hint: it
often is not unless you make it that way)? It's always important to understand
how direct competitors and/or alternatives are tackling pricing. You need to
determine what your differentiated value is and how you want your brand
represented in your market.
Are you the premium, high quality fully featured solution? Do your customers and
the market see you ...more
SVP, Marketing at Buckzy Payments
A truly successful pricing and packaging exercise can't be completed in a vacuum
which means competitive positioning must be included in the discussion. The main
reason is that you don't want to create EXACTLY the same pricing and packaging
approach as your competitors but you also need to be aware of how customers are
already being asked to buy. In addition, the competitive positioning will help
to determine if the product has already moved to a commodity or is still being
priced and packaged in a value-driven approach. This last piece is particularly
important because if your product / or...more
Head of Marketing, Cloud Enterprise & Platform at Atlassian
Your pricing inherently reflects the value of your products, and since competitive comparisons will inevitably come up in deals, you have to translate all your competitive research and market understanding into a compelling set of content and enablement for your Sales team so they can sell the "value"/better position your priducts throughout the life of your deal. If this happens primarily when pricing is being discussed, I'd argue that it's a much harder to successfully navigate.
Sr. Director, Product Marketing at productboard
Positioning (which by definition is competitive positioning since it carves out a place in the market where you are the clear winner) is your strategy. It defines who you're for and how you'll win. As a result, not only pricing and packaging but your marketing strategy, product roadmap, partnership strategy, etc are designed to deliver on that position.
Director of Pricing and Packaging, Twilio Flex at Twilio | Formerly Narvar, Medallia, Helpshift, Feedzai, Reputation.com
The truth is most pricing problems aren't pricing problems. In fact, they are
rarely pricing problems.
They are just the causal impact of poorly understood and/or communicated
positioning of a product leading to a lack of conviction and a whole host of
downstream issues.
Pricing cannot be set without the Positioning being clearly thought
through.pricing is intimately connected to Positioning.
Knowing the positioning will help you answer the following questions:
1. Is your product a 'tool/widget,' or is it a 'platform'?
2. Is it a vitamin or a painkiller?
3. How is it uniquely differ...more
Head of Product Marketing, Cisco Meraki at Cisco | Formerly Tellme Networks, Microsoft, Box, Vera, Scout RFP, and Sisu Data, to name a few.
Pricing and packaging are positioning. They're the most concrete way you are
defining the value and TCO of your solution relative to the pain a customer is
feeling. But it's important to remember that they're only one tool in your
toolbox.
Pricing relative to competition can signal a premium product in a commoditized
market. Or it can indicate a value-driven sale as a disruptor. Certainly free or
freemium is the most aggressive disruptor approach (though not always the most
successful).
Packaging is a layer deeper and is a great way to demonstrate that you
understand how your custom...more
Head of Product Marketing at Drift
They go hand in hand. You need to keep a pulse on your competitors pricing &
packaging so that you can adjust or create promos/spiffs to support your sales
team when needed. That said, you don't buld your pricing & packaging process
based on the competition. You should undersand the market - conjoin anaylsis,
willingness to pay, price elasticity, value metrics your buyers assign your
product and capabilities that are seen as table stakes versus a broad or niche
value driver.
You should use this market data (buyers, customers, competitors etc) and your
short term business goals to determi...more
4 answers
Head Of Product Marketing at 3Gtms
The part I am most experienced with is the business case justification. Indeed,
I tend to build business case justifications and personas into a single
narrative in order to make my story lines speak to the issues most important to
each stakeholder. Primary market research (1:1 interviews) is the best way to
build personas (that inform what stakeholders think about most/most often, and
the incentives they're responding to). The resulting personas/profiles are by
far the greatest driver of the ultimate business case.
The information in those personas can also inform my colleagues in Conte...more
Director of Product Marketing at LogDNA
I think with anything you do in Product Marketing, you first have to understand
what your goals are to avoid being completely consumed by the task at hand. This
includes understanding who your audience is, how the information will be used,
and most importantly how you will measure success. The same goes with market
research. Doing that little bit of prep work and reflection beforehand can
really help focus your efforts so you're getting the most out of it.
When I am approaching market and competitive research throughout the GTM
process, another question I ask early on is, "Who else has a...more
Product & Instructor Marketing, Director at Udemy
Tactically, you can apply the learnings in pretty much any way - from sourcing
to targeting. However, in many case, you'll want to make sure other teams are
aware of this information so that they can use it even if you personally aren't
involved. With that in mind, think about how you can socialize important
information that you collect broadly. Some tactical ideas:
* Make the doc easily accessible - keep the doc on 'open' view access to
everyone in the company
* Post it on your internal wiki, if one exists.
* Share on relevant team slack channels and invite questions
* Host intern...more
Director of Product Marketing at Momentive | Formerly SurveyMonkey, Nielsen
Here is where market research can and should fit into the GTM life cycle:
Exploration / business case justification:
* Market sizing; TAM analysis
* Market trends analysis
* Usage & Attitudes study (incl identifying use cases)
* Competitive intelligence
Product development:
* Shopper insights
* Persona development
* Idea screening
* Feature prioritization
* Concept testing
* UX research
* Price optimization
Launch / introduction:
* Package testing
* Name testing
* Message testing
* Campaign creative testing
Adoption & growth:
* Brand & product awareness tracking
*...more
4 answers
Director of Product Marketing at Culture Amp
The goal of competitive positioning is to own a space in the market that's yours
by focusing on differentiated value. In order to fully be able to answer the
question of what your differentiated value is or should be, you'll need to do
some analysis. The following are key buckets that you'll need to dive into:
1. Market Analysis/ Profile: Market Size, Market Trends, Market Competitors,
Market lifecycle stage
2. Segmentation& Personas -Determine your segmentation strategy and create a
detailed buyer persona profile that represents a target buyer in that particular
segment
3. Competitive A...more
Sr. Director, Product Marketing at productboard
To determine the competitive position in which you’re a clear winner and have
unique strengths, try the following:
* SWOT analysis
* Competitive map plotted against two axis of the main attributes/values that
matter to your CUSTOMERS, not your company
* Customer/Company/Competitor values venn diagram to identify your unique value
points (where company and customer overlap), where its a draw (all 3 overlap
and where copy-cat messaging stems from), where you lose (where customer and
competitor overlap), and the value points that don’t matter (company and
competitor overlap)...more
Product Marketing at Fire TV (Smart TVs) at Amazon
Early on in my career I use to spend a lot of time analyzing my competitors. I
closely followed everything on their website, product pages, old blog posts,
social media handles etc. Youcan almost make a mental model of how the company,
product and their marketing strategy has evolved over the years. It is good
learning but it is very easy to fall into a rabbit hole and spend hours reading.
Nowadays I have a google alert set on a bunch of keywords. I get a daily email
report with information just enough to keep me aware of the important movements
in my space. I think if you spend too much ti...more
Head of Product Marketing, Cisco Meraki at Cisco | Formerly Tellme Networks, Microsoft, Box, Vera, Scout RFP, and Sisu Data, to name a few.
This is highly requested, so I'll take a shot at it. But first, an
acknowlegement of bias: I don't really like competitive tools that much. I find
they put more emphasis on collection than utilization and understanding. Kind of
like how we all can't remember anyone's phone number any more because we carry
smartphones around.
Best practices and tools for determining positioning in a competitive market:
1. Understand your Tier 1 competitors' lead message and how it overlaps (or not)
with yours. That's 75% of the battle
2. Talk to customers directly on a weekly basis. Hear what they he...more
6 answers
VP of Marketing at NetSpring
There are many stakeholders when it comes to competitive intelligence and
aligning messaging and product strategy with competitive differentiation. I have
found an effective model where PMM is the the driver, although any of the
contributors could also drive. Regardless, it is a joint effort across at least
PMM, PM, Presales and Sales Enablement (some larger enterprises like IBM have
dedicated, centralized competitive program offices).
As the driver, PMM can focus on arming the sales team with up-to-date tools
(e.g. battle cards) to win, ensuring marketing can land us in competitive
eval...more
Head of Product Marketing at Ramp
Ideally, your brand positioning pillars are unique enough individually or in
combination with each other that competitive positioning is baked in.
Effectively enabling sales is about educating them on the landscape and
competitive buckets (read answer above re: putting all your competitors into
distinct categories you can more generically position against).
Then when it comes to your Tier 1 competitors, it's all about training the sales
team and making battlecard content super easy to find. Bring the energy, show
them a side-by-side demo if you can to give them confidence, and persona...more
VP of Marketing at Builder.io
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 competitor websites/content/materials
to gather what statements they use to answer each of thos...more
Director of Product Marketing at Culture Amp
Competitive differentiation should make up the pillars of your messaging and
value proposition. The reason being is that most markets are crowded and
customers can choose from many alterntatives, so your differentation needs to be
clearly articulated across the buyer's journey. To understand your competitive
differentiation you can conduct buyer persona research, closed won research,
analyze Gong calls with high ACVs, speak to reps and customer success teams, and
really hone in on determining 1) What pain points are you solving for your
buyers and 2) What makes you the "only" one? (see only...more
Sr. Director, Product Marketing at productboard
Competitive differentiation is what forms your positioning and what you build
your messaging around. With how crowded every market category is now its
essential to nail your differentiation and then communicate it through your
messaging and the rest of the go-to-market.
Enabling sales effectively requires making the competitive information
actionable and easily digestible. Whether you’re creating battlecards, sharing
competitive updates in Slack, or leading a competitive play sales training
distill it down to the key points and bring it to life with examples with what
worked in deals.
Fin...more
Head of Product Marketing, Cisco Meraki at Cisco | Formerly Tellme Networks, Microsoft, Box, Vera, Scout RFP, and Sisu Data, to name a few.
The answer here is in the question. My approach to differentiation starts with
understanding why the product or service you're responsible is uniquely suited
to a specific customer. And then focus on what makes you great, not what makes
others less good.
Too many companies (including a few I've worked with) focus too much on the
question of "how do we compete against X competitor?" This creates a
backwards-looking mentality and you're always in reactive mode. I will say it's
my favorite thing to compete against someone who's more concerned about me than
I am about them... they can chase ...more
8 answers
Product marketing is often defined as the people who position the products, but
I think it's as equally important (especially as you grow bigger) that Product
Marketing is also the most cross functional role in marketing. Creating
alignment, securing buy-in, and building momentum around a launch is just as
important (if not more) as any positioning work you've done. After all what good
is a great narrative if no-one put it to use? If you want to ace this there are
two things you need to do really well.
1) Leadership buy-in - You need product and marketing and sales leadership to be
pretty ...more
Director of Product Management, Speech and Video AI at Cisco
Product positioning is really a complex thoughtful approach, requiring
perspectives on brand, pricing and packaging coming together. I believe strongly
that its starts day-one when you build the product, define product features, who
and where you want to compete with especially the type of customer segment. I
find the exercise of positioning when done later as a PMM task gets muddled with
"messaging". Because "messaging" can only do so much, if we don't get the first
part of "why this product" is right for this "customer".
If I am a small startup, going after large enterprise customers ...more
Operating Partner at Unusual Ventures (former VP PMM @ Okta)
Ah, a tricky one! There are a few things that you can do, starting with a core
team that you trust to participate in the fluidity that is message development.
Typically, this is a small group that can speak to all the core concepts that
you need to discuss in detail. At Okta, this was our product management and
product marketing team plus a couple of ‘super AE/SEs’ to provide field input.
Once a baseline message has been developed, then it’s best to iterate quickly
via testing. For example, we use PulseQA quite a bit to get IT/security feedback
on our messaging. Or 1:1 interviews of key re...more
Head Of Product Marketing at 3Gtms
Of course it's difficult: Don't be fooled, just because you all work for the
same company doesn't mean you're all responding to the same incentives. Start by
asking what each of the three is trying to accomplish, and what success looks
like for them. Then, as objectively as possible, consider if/how your
positioning plan, as presented, corresponds with that. It probably doesn't, and
there are probably some gaps that you, as the PMM, have mentally filled in
automatically, but are still present for everybody else. Find those gaps. Build
the right bridges across them. Present each internal sta...more
Director of Product Marketing at LogDNA
Two words: customer stories! Product Marketers need to make sure that everyone
is united in telling the same story about our product and its value. I always
think of it like internal selling. And just like in the field, one of the most
compelling ways to convince people is to use customer proof points to validate
your position. Whenever I am enabling teams on positioning, I try to incorporate
a customer story that revoleves around a few key points:
* What challenges was the customer trying to solve?
* Why did they choose our solution over competitors?
* What quantifiable benefits have...more
VP of Marketing at Builder.io
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Create Quizzes, give away prizes.
4. Create content in different formats - docs, videos, intranet content,
printed materials, etc.
5. Also make sure it’s easy to find documentat...more
Director of Product Marketing at Culture Amp
The key to getting adoption is to make sure you first get executive alignment
along with bringing those teams (sales, marketing, product) along for the
journey . As you're creating your positioning and messaging make sure you're
getting sales, product, and marketing feedback. That way when you roll it out
they will feel much more compelled to use it since they were part of the
process.
Some other ideas:
1. Do an official " internal roadshow" where you roll this out to each team.
Join team meetings and present the process, the positioning and messaging and
make sure everyone knows where t...more
Head of Product Marketing, Cisco Meraki at Cisco | Formerly Tellme Networks, Microsoft, Box, Vera, Scout RFP, and Sisu Data, to name a few.
This is the job within the job. You're always balancing two macro audiences:
External (prospects and customers) and Internal (well, all your coworkers).
I'll reiterate what I've said elsewhere today. This is all about repetition,
repetition, repetition. Put your messaging and positioning frameworks in a very
visible place and refer to them constantly. Have a single slide that reinforces
the pillars whenever you talk to other teams.
One of my favorites - for a launch brief and planning kickoff, make the
positioning framework the first and primary gating asset. Drive it, get feedback
o...more
8 answers
Director of Brand and Product Marketing, Twilio.org at Twilio
You asked exactly the right question as the best messaging is all three
(consistent, creative, and differentiated). Getting there isn’t easy. I try to
break it down step by step.
I start with differentiated. What’s different about us that’s valuable to our
customer? Then creative: how do we express this in a creative way? Finally,
consistency: now that we’ve figured out a creative way to express our
differentiated message, let’s make sure it’s the same everywhere and everyone in
our company can recite it back to us.
Case study: What good is bad data?
At Segment, one of our key differenti...more
Head Of Product Marketing at 3Gtms
Depends largely on how long the company has been in business and how many
products it has in market. Brand positioning or purpose are useless if they
haven't been validated in the market, and counterproductive if they no loger
reflect the future of the company, so be careful relying on them (for a longer,
better explanation of all of this, see "Andy Raskin").
As far as product-level messaging, the best approach, in my experience, is to
look at it from a problem-stakeholder-incentive angle:
What problem is being solved?
Which stakeholder(s) must be convinced to buy?
To what incent...more
VP of Marketing at Rimsys Regulatory Management Software
Yes - I think there are 3 things you need for good messaging:
1. A clear understanding of who you're targeting. The target persona, not the
vendor is the "hero" in your story. Product marketers too often make their
product or company the main character.
2. A clear understanding of how your product is differentiated. What are the 3
- 5 specific things that you do differently from competitive/existing
solutions.
3. A compelling brand/company vision. What is your broad POV on the market? How
is it different (note this is different from product differentiation)
If you h...more
Head of Marketing at MobileCoin
We have our brand messaging and corporate messaging which ties to our company
purpose and we use it as our north star and map all related messaging to that.
It’s important to work in an integrated way so that messaging is consistent and
aligned across the company and the products we sell.
We spend a lot of time creating our Messaging Template - a source document our
PMM team uses and that we send to all cross-functional partners so they can
create content and copy aligned with our messaging.
Once our Messaging Template is created and in a good shape, we create the
related 1st call deck fo...more
Head of Product Marketing at Canva
I do believe in having a north star to help guide all your messaging. Having a
clear brand and positioning DNA which is the overarching narrative for your
entire company, will help ensure there’s consistent messaging across the entire
business and that all positioning is helping tell your company's bigger purpose
and mission. Your company’s messaging DNA should be the foundation from which
you build your product positioning.
You can use your brand DNA foundation as a north star to guide your feature or
product-based messaging. A strong brand DNA foundation will include the
following:
* ...more
VP of Marketing at Builder.io
I did an AMA a while ago that went into detail on how to build differentiated messaging - this talks about a 7-step process that I have created and adapted for use over time with different companies I have worked for.
You can read more about it here: https://sharebird.com/ama/surveymonkey-director-of-product-marketing-sarah-din-on-messaging
Head of Marketing at Instawork
To build consistency, it's critical that everyone in the company believes and
uses the brand positioning and mission. For example, at Instawork, our CEO walks
through it at every all-hands and uses a recent customer example to highlight
how we've delivered (or failed to deliver) on our value prop. It also informs
our plans, so what we build aligns with the overall company promise.
Where we can differentiate is how we message to a particular audience. Being a
labor marketplace, we work with both businesses and workers. Our business
segments span two very distinct industries and range from S...more
Head of Product Marketing, Cisco Meraki at Cisco | Formerly Tellme Networks, Microsoft, Box, Vera, Scout RFP, and Sisu Data, to name a few.
Answer one: Iterate, iterate, iterate.
Answer two: Yes, brand positioning and product positioning are inextricably
tied.
A statement that sounds bold but shouldn't be: Product marketing should drive
brand positioning. It's the why of what we do, it stems from the problems we're
solving, and builds on the uniquie approach you're taking to solving the
problem. Brand positoining also resonates down and drives how we build what we
build, how we interact with customers, and how our product (and our experience
overall!) makes our customers feel.
So, the best messaging comes from trial, er...more
5 answers
Head Of Product Marketing at 3Gtms
Unfortunately, I'm probably not the best one to query about various tools for
this - I'm the guy who still takes all his notes with a pen, has a total of four
apps downloaded to his phone and refuses to own a watch with a battery, let
alone a touch screen. My market research is similarly very old-school and my
interviews are recorded in notebooks and analyzed by laying notes out on my
desk...
I'll admit, for someone whose job it is to market SaaS, I'm a little like the
tailor whose pants never fit right. I'm also living proof of my philosophy that
behavior change is pretty much the hard...more
Director of Product Marketing at LogDNA
Market and competitive analysis can sometimes feel overwhelming. With so many
sources to keep track of, and new competitors popping up all the time, it can be
a full time job!
To avoid feeling overwhlemed, it's important to prioritize the competitors and
channels that are the msot relevant to your messaging and GTM strategy. What
competitors are your sales team coming up against the most? What industry
publications does your leadership team (especially product) look to for insights
and inspiration? Use those as a starting point, and expand your scope from
there.
But the real power of ...more
Head of Product Marketing at Retool
I think market research (and all research, really) needs to be right-sized to
the problem that you’re trying to solve. If you’re doing market research to name
a tiny feature, that’s very different from analyzing the market to change your
pricing model—so your investment into the research should look different, too!
For scrappy research: there’s no greater friend than Google. Seriously! I like
aggregators—tools that bring together a lot of insights for you at once—because
they help you cut out a ton of research time. Things like Google, G2, Gong,
SEMrush, and “state of” reports. But keep ...more
Product & Instructor Marketing, Director at Udemy
A market analysis is complex: there are many (many) different things that make
up a market, and it can easily become a sociological discussion - especially as
you see similar trends across multiple markets, driven by divergent factors.
Ultimately, you are seeking to understand a) headwinds b) tailwinds c) market
accelerants and d) what your competitors may be doing to influence this.
At a very basic level, the tools that will help you evaluate that are:
* Offsite trends: search tools like SimilarWeb, Google Trends, AppAnnie,
* Competitive: similar to the above, augmented by media spe...more
Head of Product Marketing, Cisco Meraki at Cisco | Formerly Tellme Networks, Microsoft, Box, Vera, Scout RFP, and Sisu Data, to name a few.
Your best bet is always "talk to customers." You'll learn more in 10 conversations with prospects and customers than you will with $10K or $20K in market analysis.
To keep it fresh, participate in weekly customer calls and prospecting. You'll hear where the threats are coming from immediately, and you'll know when the conversation changes.