Why Us? A Guide to Competitive Messaging

Much of the content contained in this eBook was gathered through first-hand experience working with Jaynie Smith,
CEO and President of Smart Advantage, Inc.

When Smart Advantage, Inc., helps companies identify and articulate their competitive advantages within their
marketing and sales message, those companies often experience a 20 to 40 percent increase in sales within the first
year of implementation. These results are pure evidence of how important it is to differentiate yourself from your
competitors, especially in today’s rapidly changing world.

Table of Contents
Foreword............................................................................................................................... 1
Understanding Competitive Messaging: What is it and Why Does it Matter?................................. 2
Competitive Messaging Defined.................................................................................................2
An Array of Business Benefits...................................................................................................3
The Key Players.......................................................................................................................5
Competitive Messaging in Action: Getting Started..................................................................... 6
Checklist for the CEO/Executive Team........................................................................................6
Checklist for the Internal Manager ............................................................................................7
Quickstart Guide for the Internal Manager..................................................................................8
Choosing Your Target Segments...........................................................................................8
Auditing Your Current Messaging.........................................................................................9
Identifying Your Company’s Deliverables.............................................................................10
Creating Competitive Messages.........................................................................................11
Using Market Research to Understand Customers and Competitive Messaging.......................12
Revisiting Competitive Messaging Statements.....................................................................17
Implementing the Findings...............................................................................................18
Common Pitfalls, Practical Solutions.......................................................................................19
Metrics for Reviewing Progress................................................................................................20
Competitive Messaging as a Company-Level Strategy.................................................................21
Next Steps............................................................................................................................21
Additional Resources..............................................................................................................22

Foreword
I wrote the book Creating Competitive Advantage because in my research with mid-market com-
panies, I found that only two CEOs out of the 1,000 I spoke with could clearly name their com-
pany’s competitive advantages. The other 99.8 percent could only offer vague, imprecise gener-
alities. Even today, having now asked more than 4,000 CEOs what their competitive advantages
are, only five have been able to give me a clear answer.

Don’t let this become your story. Whether you are a retailer, manufacturer, distributor, or service provider, if you can’t
articulate what your competitive advantage is, you’re surely losing customers and market share. Identifying your com-
petitive advantage is a surefire way to close deals, retain clients, and stay miles ahead of the competition.

Technology is increasingly allowing consumers to pick and choose who they buy from based on price. As a result, many
industries are painting themselves into a corner for the simple reason that they can’t compete on anything but price.

My personal mantra is, “If you can build confidence while also eliminating risk from the buying decision, price becomes
much less of an issue.” When you are able to clearly articulate and communicate your competitive advantages to
your customers and prospects, and convince them to do business with you rather than with a competitor, you don’t
have to rely on price as a tiebreaker.

“Why Us? A Guide to Competitive Messaging” is the result of a seminar I delivered for a group of OpenView’s portfolio
companies. OpenView understands competitive messaging and has created an excellent guide to help expansion-
stage technology companies begin uncovering what differentiates them from their competition.

Both OpenView and Smart Advantage would love to hear about the success your company has achieved with the help
of this eBook and the concepts in Creating Competitive Advantage. Please share your stories with us.

Jaynie L. Smith
CEO and President
Smart Advantage, Inc.

Why Us? A Guide to Competitive Messaging | 1

Understanding Competitive
Messaging: What is it and
Why Does it Matter?
Prospects buy from you — and customers buy more from you — when they perceive that your company, and its
products or services, are better than those of your competitors. One of the best ways to enhance this perception is
to develop competitive messages that truly resonate with your target audience and convey all of the things that allow
you to create unique value and set your company apart from the competition.

ANALYSIS Competitive messages can be developed by following a fairly simple process that consists of analysis, writing, and
market research. Before you get started, you should ensure that your prospects and buyers are segmented into dis-
tinct groups with similar needs and purchasing criteria. This step will ensure that your messaging is focused and
specific to your market targets.
WRITING
“Why Us? A Guide to Competitive Messaging” provides an overview of competitive messaging and can help you create
the kinds of messages that will increase your perceived value in the marketplace and help you win more business. The
MARKET first section of this eBook will help you understand competitive messaging, while the second part outlines a process
RESEARCH for creating and executing a competitive messaging strategy.

COMPETITIVE MESSAGING DEFINED
Competitive advantage is what separates your business from that of your competitors. Harvard Business School pro-
fessor Michael Porter describes competitive advantage as when a company performs better than its rivals by pursuing
different activities or performing similar activities in different ways. The advantage is gained by either providing greater
value to customers or by offering greater benefits and services. These advantages are ultimately what shape your com-
petitive messages.


Being able to articulate why your company is different through messaging is an essential component of an effective
marketing strategy. After all, your unique value statements will most likely appear on all of your marketing materials
(e.g., your website, blog, e-newsletter, etc.) and be used throughout the sales process.

Competitive messaging doesn’t always reflect your company’s strengths or product features, as those types of state-
ments may only explain why you exist. Often, prospects and customers don’t really care why you exist. It’s your job
to find out what they do care about through research and use that information to craft messages that speak to those
concerns, making prospects and customers want to learn more and eventually buy your product. The best messages
are typically based on specific characteristics, actions, or behaviors that set you apart. But the only way your mes-
sages will distinguish you is if your prospects and customers believe them and that you offer truly unique value.

AN ARRAY OF BUSINESS BENEFITS
Going through the process of identifying your competitive advantages, conducting research to see how customers
and prospects rate those advantages in terms of importance, and crafting competitive messages based on your
findings will help you in a variety of ways. Through this practice you can:

Understand exactly what your target prospects care about. You’ll find out what your target prospects
want by hypothesizing important purchase criteria and then testing them until you get them right.

Improve your sales and marketing productivity. Using the right messages gives you the opportunity
to differentiate your company from the competition in a succinct and meaningful way, making your products and
services easier to market and sell.

Measure how well you are communicating your value proposition to improve your
messaging over time. If you perform this practice regularly (e.g., annually), you’ll be able to measure
and adjust your messages as the market changes.


Prospect and customer research will also help you:
Understand how your company matches up against the competition, which will help your product
development efforts.

Gauge the brand awareness of your company and its products vis-a-vis your competitors in the marketplace,
which will help you adjust the marketing and influence channels you’re using to reach your market targets.

Understand the effects that your current marketing efforts have on the perception of your company and
its products in the minds of your target prospects, which will help your overall communication efforts.

Why Competitive Messaging is Critical for Early Stage Companies

“The act of creative competitive messaging involves placing yourself in a market and positioning your
offering against others in that market. For early stage companies, particularly ones in emerging spaces,
this gives prospects a frame of reference to help answer the question ‘What do you do?’ Contrasting your
offering with the ones that your prospects are already familiar with can make it easier to understand.

“When a company expresses the value of their customer offerings, it is important to provide proof. You
can say that you are ‘the leading provider of...’ but unless you demonstrate some evidence of that claim,
the statement is meaningless. Customer proof points, third-party reviews, and quotes
from industry experts can all serve to increase the credibility of a competitive claim.”

April Dunford, Founder and Principal Consultant, RocketWatcher


THE KEY PLAYERS
The CEO and the rest of the executive team must buy in to the value of the research,
determine the long- and short-term strategic goals for that research, communicate the
importance of the practice to employees, and dedicate proper resources to the effort.

At the executive level, this means: Key Roles for the Implementation

• Appointing an internal manager such as the VP of There are two primary internal roles for this practice,
Marketing or the Chief Marketing Officer to oversee and this eBook contains corresponding checklists to
the process help each role get started:
1. The CEO/executive team, who set the primary goals
• Approving an approach and plan that is right for
and strategy.
the company based on its goals
2. The internal manager, who implements and manages
• Properly resourcing the effort with the appropriate the process.
staff and budget
A third role relates to the market research component
• Communicating the importance of the initiative to of competitive messaging. Use an independent, third-
the entire company during a company-wide meeting party resource to manage the market research for your
customers and prospects. Doing so will help ensure
• Reviewing the impact of the messaging statements that your findings are objective, as third-party firms can
on your company’s goals and making adjustments perform the research on a double-blind basis (neither
on a regular (e.g., annual) basis for each segment the survey taker nor the person delivering the research
knows who the client is).

“From a market perspective, competitive messaging separates you from everyone else, helps to promote
buzz about you because of your differences, and helps prospects answer the question, ‘Why you?’
“From an economic perspective, it allows you to have some combination of a premium
price, faster sales cycles, lower customer acquisition costs, higher gross margins, and
higher renewal and upsell.”
Scott Maxwell, Founder and Senior Managing Director
OpenView Venture Partners


Competitive Messaging in Action:
Getting Started
Your company can initiate CHECKLIST FOR THE CEO/EXECUTIVE TEAM
a competitive messaging
Use the following checklist to ensure that your competitive messaging efforts
process immediately with
have the greatest probability of success. The executive team should ensure
the proper focus and
that all items are checked off, while the internal manager should be respon-
resources. Now that you sible for working with that team to complete the various tasks involved.
know what competitive
messaging is all about and We believe in the value of a competitive messaging process for our brand.

why it is important for your We have discussed, prioritized, and approved this effort as a corporate
business, here’s how to marketing initiative.
get started. This part of the
We have determined the target segment(s) for the competitive
eBook contains checklists
messaging process.
and quickstart guides that
will help each of the people We have assigned an internal manager to supervise and oversee the
in key roles perform their competitive messaging process.

activities relatively quickly. We have agreed to incorporate the newly created competitive messaging
statements into our marketing materials; train our employees on how
to use the statements; identify and track metrics around performance
against customers’ purchase criteria; and set and manage goals geared
toward driving performance.

We have developed measurable goals so that we can track the
effectiveness of our newly created messages.

We have agreed to a budget for the research and marketing components.

All of our employees know our messages and are using them on a
regular basis.


CHECKLIST FOR THE INTERNAL MANAGER
Use the following checklist to ensure that the internal manager is set up for success and
following the best approach to create competitive messaging statements.

All of the items on the CEO/executive team checklist have been completed.

I am aware of the budget determined by the CEO and/or executive team.

I have evaluated our current messaging statements.

I have identified our customers’ and prospects’ purchase criteria.

I have developed a set of deliverables based on our capabilities and the customers’ and prospects’ purchase criteria.

I have created preliminary competitive messaging statements.

I will test the preliminary statements against customers’ purchase criteria through independent market research.

I have identified an independent market research firm to conduct the prospect/customer study.

I have developed a standard statement of work (SOW) to share with the market research firm to specify the project.

I have identified and supplied a sufficient list of customers and/or prospects for the market research firm to
develop a random sample.

I have refined my competitive messaging statements, and/or developed new ones, based on the research findings.

I have incorporated the new competitive messaging statements into the marketing materials.

I have ensured that each member of the company knows the competitive messaging statements.

I have identified and tracked metrics around performance against customers’ purchase criteria.

I have set goals geared toward driving performance.

I have ensured that there is a process in place to identify operational improvements needed to align the
company with the customers’ top purchase criteria.

I am committed to revisiting the competitive messages on at least an annual basis for each target segment.


QUICKSTART GUIDE FOR THE INTERNAL MANAGER
The following quickstart guide should be used by the internal manager to efficiently run
through the practice of developing competitive messaging statements.

CHOOSING YOUR TARGET SEGMENTS
Before you can begin to develop competitive messages, you need to:
1. Segment your customers and prospects based on common needs, characteristics, and purchasing behaviors.
2. Prioritize the segments based on business value.

As the internal manager, it is your job to determine which messages will resonate with each segment, because each
segment will undoubtedly have different needs and pain points. Therefore, you’ll have to walk through the competi-
tive messaging process for each segment.

It’s important to note that this kit does not explain how to segment your target markets. If your company has not
already done that, you’ll need to perform that segmentation before you begin the competitive messaging process.

Here are some resources to help you determine your target segment(s):
Market Segmentation Introduction You’ve Got Your Segments, What About Personas?
Market Segmentation Reconciling Market Segments and Personas
The Power of the Persona Digital Buyer Persona
Smart Advantage, Inc.


AUDITING YOUR CURRENT MESSAGING
Now, if you’re ready to get started, begin by analyzing your company’s current messaging. You want to answer the question:

“ hy will a customer buy from us
W
instead of our competition?”
Specifically, you should:

• Capture existing “Why Us” statements/messaging at your company and at your competitors
• Identify any shortcomings with that messaging
• Identify any of your company’s competitive disadvantages

While studying your competitive messaging, review the following:

• Website homepages
• Website product pages
• Press release boilerplates
In addition, consult with your sales representatives,
• Data sheets
• Product catalogs
any corporate spokespeople, and your executive

• Various advertisements
team members to get their input on your competi-

• Presence on social media
tive messaging and to see what types of messages

• Articles or press/analyst mentions
they are currently using. Ask them how effective

• Other marketing materials they think the current messaging is and why.


IDENTIFYING YOUR COMPANY’S DELIVERABLES
Deliverables are the characteristics, actions, and behaviors that set your company apart from competitors. There
are numerous deliverables that might make your company stand out beyond the actual products or services it sells,
including:

• Customer service • Consistency
• Quality or reputation • Innovation
• The results you deliver for your customers • Trust/relationships
• Employees or professional network • Speed of implementation
• Resource base

What is your competitive advantage?

Use the following exercise to guide you through the process — and be sure to stay away
from price and product features.

Highlight all of the deliverables and offerings that apply to your business, and add any others you can think
of that are not on the list. There are only two rules in this exercise:
1. Any deliverables that you add need to be objective.
2. You must be able to quantify all deliverables.

Make certain that you record your deliverables because you’ll use them later to craft your competitive
messaging statements.


Why Us? A Guide to Competitive Messaging

Why Us? A Guide to Competitive Messaging

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