What is your strategy to crafting messaging around features that your competitors already have?

Typing quickly, so excuse any typos! Competitors will always have a common set of features. Every pizza needs a crust and some toppings – what they are, how they manifest, how they taste – that's what's different. So, first, I'd think: What's unique about my set of features? Are they solving for exactly the same use case? How do they play alongside our other products and features, in ways that they unlock a different set of use cases? This relates to a previous question about marketing a group o ...Read More

Messaging strategy begins with a deep understanding of our customers' world view, fears, concerns, needs and pain points. Within this I try to focus on:Continuous Narrative: This is a strategy where we anchor on a few core themes that we'll communicate over the course of a year (or roadmap cycle) to our audience. The themes form the basis of a bigger story or value that we are sharing with our customers and inviting them to be part of the journey. We'll then pepper the narrative at key moments w ...Read More

Crafting compelling messaging for features that your competitors already have can be difficult since it's hard to find a competitive advantage in this instance. When I'm in this situation, I bring the messaging back to the product's overall competitive advantage and hone in on the unique benefit that it provides. It's important to always communicate a benefit or outcome with your messaging, even if it's the same feature that your competitors already have. I also find it helps to get specific abo ...Read More

If you are focussed on messaging at the feature level, there's probably little you can do to differentiate if you are playing catch up with a specific piece of functionality. But messaging the feature in the overall context of how your product is different and better than a competitors is how you can differentiate. For me differentiation starts with product positioning (check out April Dunford's Obviously Awesome if you haven't already). Her five components of positioning: - Competitive Alternat ...Read More

When messaging in a known category, there are two ends of the spectrum: differentiate or blend in. The best approach is usually finding some blend of the two. As marketers, we’re often taught to focus on our “UVP” (unique value proposition) or “USP” (unique selling proposition), but there are absolutely times when the desire to show up as a “special snowflake” can end up making it hard for consumers to grasp what it is you’re offering. To balance this, you may consider using naming and messaging ...Read More

There are a few parts that go into this at the foundational level, that I think help when doing the tactical writing for gap closing features. Prior to writing any code, you and your product counterparts should have aligned on the why behind building this feature (ie X competitor has it, and we are losing deals because we don't) but you should have also established the differentiation in what you're building. If the feature is basic, and functionally the same - it is still a part of your wider o ...Read More

Serve your audience first, I’d say. If you’re both solving the same problem in the same way, your messaging will sound very similar, and that’s fine. What you’ll want to avoid is highlighting a differentiator in that feature that no one cares about. A good test for this is finding out whether that thing could be a reason why your ICP does or doesn’t buy. I remember I was once competing with another link analysis tool, and really wanted to highlight that we were using unsupervised machine learnin ...Read More

Messaging should focus on the benefits you deliver to a customer, not the features. When you focus on benefits, you can start truly differentiating based not just on the "things" your customer can do with your product, but also on the "why" behind your company and your product overall. If you're focused exclusively on messaging based on features, you open yourself up to comparison from competitors. Focus instead on the value your products deliver to your customers, and you have more room to diff ...Read More