What are some of the best practices and tools that you use to determine competitive positioning that you could recommend?

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), ...Read More

First, there is no one magic tool that will do your Competitive Intel program for you. All of the tools below require a strategy before using. But they can be extremely powerful when you use them correctly. For competitive alerts, battlecard creation, and win/loss reporting, try looking at Klue or Crayon. For third-party agencies that conduct win/loss interviews and surveys on your behalf, take a look at Clozd, DoubleCheck Research, or Iceberg IQ. For review mining, check out G2, TrustRadius, or ...Read More

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 detaile ...Read More

Some best practices and tools! Market Research: Competitor Analysis Tools: Leverage tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, or SimilarWeb for comprehensive competitor analysis, including website traffic, keywords, and backlink strategies. Industry Reports: Explore industry-specific reports and studies to understand market trends, challenges, and emerging opportunities. Customer Feedback: Surveys and Interviews: Conduct surveys and interviews with existing customers to understand their pain points, preferenc ...Read More

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. T ...Read More

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 ...Read More

Remember to use data from the sales team and customer conversations to determine which competitors to focus on.  Your positioning should be based on how each vendor attempts to solve the customer’s problem. Start with identifying what is the problem your customer is trying to solve. Then, go through each key competitor and understand how they help the customer solve that problem. Think like the customer! Why would a customer choose your competitor? Then follow this same process for your product. ...Read More