Don't Be a Copycat

Every week, Product Marketers often engage in the following Slack exchange:

? 9:41 am?

???? Product Person: Hey, check out this link {insert link to a webinar, blog post, or a random tweet from someone that works at a competitor}.

? 9:42 am?

???? Prod Marketing Lead: Cool. ??

? 9:43 am?

???? Product Person: We should do something like this. We need to be talking about this topic.

? 9:44 am?

???? Prod Marketing Lead: Does our product have a competitive advantage that we should be talking about? What would our message be to differentiate the conversation?

? 9:45 am?

???? Product Person: No, but we have something on the roadmap. We can talk about that.

? 9:47 am?

???? Prod Marketing Lead: That's great. When are we launching it, and what is our differentiation?

? 9:49 am?

???? Product Person: It should be launching in the next two years. I just need to build the business case, get it approved, staff the team, run beta trials and release it. Let's talk about that and what our vision is.

? 9:50 am?

???? Prod Marketing Lead: Yeah, well. I think that is great, but why don't we focus on talking about things we are able to sell and differentiate us? I think that will work to drive more leads and revenue in the short term. We can talk about this in two years when it is GA.

Product Person goes quiet...

? 10:01 am?

?? Product Person 2: Hey, check out this link {insert link to a webinar, blog post, or a random tweet from someone that works at a competitor}.

And the cycle begins again.

Actively Watch

Let me be clear. I 100% believe that competitive intelligence is a function of the entire organization, and it is great that members of product, sales & engineering are all actively engaged in monitoring what competitors are doing. However, just because a competitor is doing something doesn't mean it is the right thing for your business needs and goals.

Who does what and monitors what is often a tough question to answer? At my company, we spent many years going back and forth on where the lines are drawn. We eventually defined it simply in two ways: competitive analysis and competitive intelligence.

Competitive Intelligence

Product Marketing, with the help of a competitive intelligence tool, monitors competitors and the market. We look at what products and services our competitors are actively talking about and how they are talking about them. Our team then works with sales and the product team to position our solutions against those activities. We also include Analyst Relations in this work. This enables us to test our message with other experts who are actively engaged with competitors prior to putting anything out in the market.

Competitive Analysis

Product, with support from engineering, owns competitive analysis. This is the practice of actively looking deep into what competitors' products do vs. what they say they do. This work enables our product and engineering teams to figure out the differentiators upfront and build it into the product, not just the messaging when it is ready for release.

Define Who You Are

Now that the teams are aligned as to who is responsible for what, comes the hard part. I firmly believe that a successful business must stand apart from its competitors in what you do and say.

The message I like to carry through is to find your niche. Through competitive intelligence and analysis, find where your product differentiates.

As my example above shows, it is easy for anyone within an organization to say let's do what our competitors are doing, but that is so flawed.

For instance, if you are simply copying a message or activity and just changing an adjective to make it your own, your competitors and your customers are going to be quick to catch on. You are not going to drive a prospect or active customer to watch your webinar or read your collateral if they are getting inundated with similar messaging from every company in your space.

You must also take the size of your competition into account. Product marketers are often asked why can't do X if our competitor is, and the answer may be as simple as money. When you are a privately funded company or a startup, you will not have the resources available to you that a publicly-traded company has. They may spend more on marketing in a year than your company makes. That doesn't mean their products are better. It just means that they can own SEO and digital spending.

That is why it is even more important to make sure that what your company puts out in the market is differentiated from the product to the messaging and not just a digital copycat.