423. How to GTM with confidence 🤠
An overview on de-positioning your competition (and positioning yourself)
Hi there 👋
I’m really happy to bring you all a special guest post from a friend and former colleague, DJ Oragui, who is one of the best product marketers (and marketers, period) that I know. He’s created a fantastic Go-To-Market strategy course that launches in July and was kind enough to share a snippet with me and you. If you’re interested to dive deeper with DJ, you can register your interest today to get $300 off the full course when the 1st cohort opens up.
(Or, if you know know someone who’ll benefit from the course, you can earn $150 per referral.)
Below is an excerpt from the lesson on “How to de-position your competitors & gain mindshare.” Enjoy!
Kevan
(ᵔᴥᵔ)
Thank you for being part of this newsletter. Each week, I share playbooks, case studies, stories, and links from inside the startup marketing world and my time at Oyster, Buffer, and more.
Say hi anytime at hello@kevanlee.com. I’d love to hear from you.
The hidden GTM power of depositioning your competitors
Competitive intelligence is a key component of GTM strategy, as its execution can accelerate or stifle market penetration.
When done well, good competitive intelligence programs can generate:
Increased win rates vs. competitors in open deals
Market narratives and category perception shifting in your favor
Increased sales velocity as prospects move through buying stages much faster
However, utilizing competitive insights to drive meaningful pipeline, revenue, and sales confidence remains a challenge amongst GTM teams.
Companies typically build competitive intel programs around the following activities:
Tracking competitor brand mentions on digital channels
Slack posts mentioning new funding, sr. leadership hires, key product announcements, or poor online reviews
Battlecards for use before, during, and after sales calls
Monitoring live sales conversations to identify competitor discount strategies
Using those insights to create compelling versus / alternative landing pages
In isolation, these activities provide surface-level support to GTM teams but do very little to drive attention or demand for your products in the market.
Some aim to solve this problem by belittling their competition publicly, spreading misinformation and confusing the market about the truth, hoping buyers will choose their solution over another.
After all, the products that “win” their market are very rarely “The Best.”
They’re simply perceived as the best.
Therefore, market perception and winning mindshare is the aim of the game.
But instead of taking direct, cheap shots at your competitors when they’re down, it’s far more effective to deposition competitors when they’re at their very best.
They will never see it coming, and your market (the audience), will never live it down in your favor.
If done correctly, you could create a surge of demand and interest for your products without even mentioning your competitors’ names.
You simply need to read the market well, and strike whilst the iron is hot.
There are a handful of tactics you can employ as you approach this depositioning exercise. One of the most effective is to discover the value props and messages which resonate with your ICP. There’s a ton of work that goes into this research, but at a high-level, a strong value prop and messaging program includes:
Auditing your existing core messaging statements; split by channel/source
Conducting internal, collaborative workshops with GTM teams on new messaging
Testing and refining messaging on real customers and prospects
Achieve leadership buy-in and rollout new messaging
When you’re finished with this work, you’ll have a clear-eyed view of what matters to your particular customer segment and how to use their language to describe it.
Typically, this depth of research into your niche will reveal a precise way that you can position yourself in contrast to your competitors, effectively depositioning them as the solution for your niche of customers.
(For a great example of this, check out the crowded mobile space where brands like Visible had to take a very specific position as the un-family plan …
Depositioning is just one part of the upcoming program we’ve created called Go-to-Market with Confidence, launching July 1st 2023.
In addition to the depositioning, you’ll discover how to:
Build a defensible go-to-market strategy that drives meaningful pipeline and revenue
Perform market sizing and TAM analysis with pin-point accuracy
Achieve true marketing, sales and leadership alignment
Run sophisticated market surveys to inform current and future pricing strategy
Sequence GTM programs designed to create, capture and convert demand with purpose
About this newsletter …
Hi, I’m Kevan, a marketing exec based in Boise, Idaho, who specializes in startup marketing and brand-building. I previously built brands at Oyster, Buffer, and Vox. Each week, I share playbooks, case studies, stories, and links from inside the startup marketing world. Not yet subscribed? No worries. You can check out the archive, or sign up below:
Thank you for being here! 🙇♂️
I’m lucky to count folks from great brands like these (and many more) as part of this newsletter community.
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