We have several competitors with similar offerings to us, what are PMM tips to help us stand out?

Ah yes, this is a tough one! Here are a few tips that could help:

• Focus on customer outcomes: Instead of just listing features, highlight the unique benefits and outcomes your product delivers. Show how your product improves customer experience, saves time, or solves pain points better than competitors. A focus on outcomes speaks to the impact on your customer’s business.

• Refine your positioning: Position your product based on a specific niche, industry, or audience need. Narrowing your focus on a particular segment of the market can help you stand out and resonate more deeply with that audience. Lean into where your solution excels.

• Leverage customer stories: Authentic, relatable customer stories and testimonials can be incredibly powerful. Even in competitive spaces, showcasing real-world success with measurable results makes your offering feel more trustworthy and impactful.

• Emphasize your ‘why’: Beyond features, communicate the mission, vision, or values behind your product. Explaining the ‘why’ behind what you do, whether it’s customer-centricity, innovation, or a unique philosophy, can create an emotional connection with your audience and differentiate you on a deeper level.

• Highlight proprietary features: If there are technical aspects, capabilities, or processes that truly set your product apart (even if small), highlight them. These proprietary differentiators are often missed by competitors and can make your solution feel more innovative or tailored to specific customer needs.

• Create a superior customer experience: Focus on making the buying, onboarding, and support process smoother and more value-driven than competitors. Sometimes the overall experience is what sets you apart, even if features are similar.

• Be consistent and clear: Ensure your messaging is clear, concise, and consistent across all channels. Confusing or inconsistent messaging can dilute your value, while clarity makes your offering more memorable and trustworthy.

In an increasingly competitive and crowded market, there's naturally going to be high overlap of product offerings between companies. Here are a couple ways to standout:

1. Prove Outcomes, Validated by Real Customer Stories

   Too often, brands focus solely on features, which can blur the lines between competitors. Focus on the outcomes and value your product drives, using real customer stories. Use data, case studies, and testimonials to showcase the measurable impacts your product delivers. Prove your value by showing real-world results that competitors can’t easily replicate and let your customers' success lead the way in shaping your product differentiation.

2. Brand Marketing and Thought Leadership

   Your brand authority and expertise in the space can serve as a powerful differentiator when your offerings are technically similar to competitors. Customers trust brands they view as innovators and industry leaders. Position your brand and key leaders as thought leaders by consistently producing valuable, forward-thinking content—whether through blogs, whitepapers, or events—focusing on the future of your industry or vertical. Partner with respected experts or influencers to expand your credibility.

Find your niche. Every product does what it does slightly differently. At Algolia, we had a search as a service product. Our niche was that we made really amazing e-commerce front end experiences possible. Yeah there were other verticals that benefited from Algolia, but most of them didn’t care about what made us special – super fast, amazing uptime, crazy extensibility. Build your brand/product love within the niche and spread out. That niche might be a vertical or it might be a specific persona within an organization (for example, do you sell to DevOps – a huge market – or do you focus on Cloud Security Architects – a potentially much smaller audience…but one you can target/focus your  messaging and product features on much more easily.

Check out my answer to the question "What strategy do you use to ensure everyone internally agrees on what differentiates you from competition?" for some practical tips at how to go about identifying your top differentiators. I'd start with doing some win-loss interviews to understand what your customers perceive sets you apart from your competitors.

In a crowded, competitive market, relying on having great words for the same features and benefits is a never-ending race. Even having the latest feature can only differentiate for a short period, as competitors can replicate most things quickly in this modern market. 

The most important thing is to have a clear story and focus on a niche to address underserved segments of your audience. Make sure you have a unique value prop that meets the service gap and sets you apart from what competitors are saying. For example, Dollar Shave Club targeted men looking for affordable subscriptions and focused on simplicity and value. 

When product offerings start to become too similar, partner with your customer success org to tell the story of how your company is the most customer-obsessed. Most product messaging focuses on giving people keys to a fancy car and letting them figure it out. You could differentiate with a focus on service and a human brand that promises to be a partner to your customers in achieving their outcomes.

Product marketers should also closely partner with their product team to ensure the customer's voice is heard and the product roadmap is aligned with the customer’s needs. Staying innovative on product capabilities and having a strong and clear product roadmap you can communicate is key to differentiating in a crowded market, especially in the enterprise segment. 

Building a strong customer community can be your secret weapon in differentiating from your customers. Customers trust their peers a lot more than they trust your claims. Partner with your customer advocacy function to build a community that you can use to validate your positioning and provide them with a platform to sell for you. There is no stronger differentiator of your product in a crowded market!

To stand out, focus on building emotional connections and offering a distinct customer experience. Instead of just talking about features, speak to the transformation your solution offers. Leverage customer success stories, align with market trends, and emphasize your company’s unique vision. Differentiation can also come from the way you deliver your message—whether it’s through exceptional customer service, thought leadership, or unique POV content that is differentiated and of value to your buyer personas.

There are two ways to stand out — what you say, and how you say it.

What you say

This is the core of positioning. Find your competitive differentiation, even though you may think everyone's solution is the same. (April Dunford has a great framework for determining whether there really is no differentiation: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/aprildunford_one-of-the-most-common-questions-i-get-is-activity-7242555636188676097-b937). If you're writing this as a PMM for one part of the product, and that area really has no differentiation, try messaging how your part of the product is better than alternatives because it's made more valuable by the rest of your product.

How you say it

The substance of what you say is only part of the story. Your storytelling techniques are often more powerful than the content itself. Let customers tell your story for you, and give them a megaphone. Find stats that illustrate just how valuable your product is. Showcase incredible quotes from customers that represent how you want everyone to feel about your product. Do a product overview video that brings the power of the product to life. Highlight use cases that people can envision doing themselves. Pinpoint the most urgent pains your product solves, articulate those pains in a way so accurate it's almost uncomfortable to listen to (or so funny they stop what they're doing to listen) and then save the day with your solution.