How to incorporate competitive intel into your positioning and messaging

Every marketer knows that competitive knowledge is part of any business strategy. Porter’s 5 Forces, the 5 Cs of marketing… none of it is new. Heck, most positioning frameworks out there include it too.

Yet for some reason, in most SaaS B2B companies, competitive intelligence is rarely used for anything other than battlecards. And even these are notorious for not being deeply adopted by sales teams.

As competitive intel pros and product marketers, we should find a way to elevate this knowledge. And even better — we need to simplify it for internal teams so they can use it in their jobs.

That’s exactly what led me to develop the Competitive Positioning Blueprint. I was a founding (read: solo) head of product marketing at a company that sold an expensive and complicated platform to other companies, often enterprises. The market was hot and we had different competitors in every use case and many status quo options that IT folks would never give up on. The challenge was real: How do I figure out what makes us great and give the sales team leverage?

This approach goes beyond feature comparisons, diving deep into how you can differentiate your offering in a way that resonates with your ideal customers.

Why "blueprint" you ask? Because I wanted to create something that any team at the company could interpret. Product, sales, content, growth, you name it. Even if I don’t have time to produce an asset for them, they could figure out how to use it in their world.

Let’s go.

The Five-Step Competitive Positioning Blueprint

1. Define Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

The foundation of effective marketing is a crystal-clear and specific understanding of your ideal customer. If this seems obvious, fist-bump yourself and move on to step 2. But from my experience as an in-house product marketing director and as a consultant, it's where many teams fall flat.

Your ICP should be specific and backed up by data. Consider factors such as:

• Company profile: size, revenue, geography, industry

• Key pain points and challenges

• Decision-making structure

• Technology stack and maturity

• Growth stage and priorities

• Triggers that move them toward action

Remember, we're not looking for every possible customer, but the ones who are the best fit for your solution. Opportunistic sales will always exist, but we’re not optimizing for them.

2. Conduct Comprehensive Competitor Research

Once you know your ICP, it's time to dive deep into researching your competitors. It’s okay to start from a broader list and include incumbents, even if they’re indirect competitors. However, the focus here isn't on creating an exhaustive feature comparison table. Instead, we're looking at the bigger picture:

• Target audience and ideal customer profile

• Key use cases and pain points

• Go-to-market strategy and primary channels

• Brand perception and reputation

• Pricing levers (usage vs. seats, bundles) and general tiers

• Community engagement and thought leadership

Product features change constantly, but brand and go-to-market strategy? Not so much. We’re trying to understand how they’re positioning themselves in the market, the language they use, the benefits they emphasize, how they differentiate themselves, what types of customers they’re choosing to amplify, and whether their target audience is their actual audience.

This research phase is crucial because it provides the context to identify your unique position in the market. It's about understanding their overall strategy and the market perception of them.

3. Narrow Your Competitive Focus

With a clear ICP and thorough competitor research, you can now identify which competitors are truly relevant to your audience. This step is all about focus.

This focused approach allows you to:

• Tailor your messaging to address specific competitive scenarios

• Be specific about your differentiators

• Avoid wasting resources and brand share on irrelevant comparisons

The solutions that best align with the needs and characteristics of your ideal customers are the ones you want to address in your positioning. Other solutions would be much easier to dismiss, not because they’re terrible but because their expertise and focus are elsewhere. Your job is to clearly point that out.

4. Identify Your Distinct Capabilities

Now it's time to articulate what makes your solution stand out. Start by listing the capabilities that make you the best choice for your ICP. It’s natural to think about it in terms of product capabilities, and that’s a great start – but consider these areas too:

• Integration capabilities and ecosystem that drives distribution or usage

• Security and compliance that meet necessary regulations in some sectors

• Customer support and success programs that drive high value for customers

• Implementation processes that lead to high adoption and low churn

• Access to community of customers and SMEs

5. Create Your Competitive Stack-Up

The final step is to bring it all together in a simple format. Create a matrix that compares your distinct capabilities against each competitor that is relevant to your ICP.

For each competing alternative:

• Mark a capability green if it doesn’t exist

• Mark a capability gray if it's comparable

This visual representation serves multiple purposes:

• It clearly shows where you stand out

• It helps identify areas for product development or messaging

• It provides a quick reference for sales and marketing teams where to draw buyers' attention

The power of this approach lies in its holistic view. You're not just comparing individual features but showcasing your overall fit for your ICP.

Putting the Framework into Action

With this framework in place, you now have a powerful tool to guide your positioning strategy and messaging across channels.

You know your ICP and how you’re different than other alternatives. For your positioning strategy, you might want to pick a villain and anchor your messaging around them, or highlight specific capabilities and tie these to benefits with customer data and testimonials.

1. Sales Enablement: Clear, concise and ICP-focused talk tracks that help your buyers understand how you’re different than other alternatives.

2. Website Messaging: Homepage, FAQs, product pages — you know what to highlight, how to explain your uniqueness, and how to tie it to pains, benefit and features your ICP cares about.

3. Content Strategy: Develop content about the problem you’re solving, how you’re solving it, and market guides about considering different alternatives.

4. Product Development: When you get product related for feedback from customers, sales and customer success, you can place in in the context of the market. Guide priorities between requests and ideation based on maintaining and deepening your competitive advantage.

5. Competitive Campaigns: create targeted campaigns that directly address how you shine compared to specific competitors instead of re-iterating generic claims.

The Power of Focused Competitive Intelligence

In a world where there are 30k+ SaaS companies in the US alone and practically every category is crowded, generic claims don’t cut it. And while we've gotten better at showcasing proof and trust, most SaaS messaging still sounds the same and there’s a good chance you won’t have any clue what a company does if you only looked at its website.

Using competitive intelligence in positioning isn’t just common sense—it’s a hack. Our brains constantly classify and compare new things to familiar ones. Since your buyers compare you to other solutions, whether these are complicated platforms or a spreadsheet, doesn’t matter. But if you hone in on what makes you different, they can understand what you do and where to place you in their mental map compared to other alternatives.

Remember, effective positioning isn't about being all things to all people. It's about being the absolute best solution for your specific ideal customer profile. By focusing your competitive intelligence efforts and aligning your messaging accordingly, you can create a compelling narrative that resonates with the right audience.

As you implement this framework, keep in mind that competitive landscapes and customer needs evolve. Regularly revisit and update your analysis to ensure your positioning remains relevant and impactful.

By making competitive intelligence a cornerstone of your positioning strategy, you're not just reacting to the market—you're actively shaping how your ideal customers perceive and evaluate their options. In doing so, you're not just competing; you're differentiating.

P.S. If you liked this, consider joining the Healthy Competition community!