7 Must-Have Assets for Your Competitive Intel Program
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How to Build a Robust Competitive Asset Library
Nearly 1,000 new technologies are introduced annually into the marketing technology landscape. Barriers to entry are lower than ever and software technologies are beyond crowded—you can’t even make out the majority of players’ logos in some G2 grids!
As a result, buyers’ tech stacks are expanding. They’re larger than ever with employees using an average of 89 different apps per year.
It’s safe to say that there’s a lot of noise out there distracting buyers. In order to stand out, you’ll need to be crystal clear on how you compare and contrast with other solutions. It’s not Field of Dreams anymore, folks. Just because you built something doesn’t mean they’ll come.
But this isn’t something that some good ol’ fashioned product and content marketing can’t fix. Here are a few competitive resources I developed over the years to support my companies in their pursuit of standing out. 👀 Check them out and start working on any that your competitive intelligence program is missing. Once you're done, you’ll have an arsenal of assets to educate prospects in just about any buying stage or situation. Let’s jump in.
⚡️ Customer-Facing Assets
1. Comparison landing page(s)
I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard this: “I don’t want to mention my competitors because it’ll just give them attention.” If you read the intro to this blog, then you’ll understand how silly that sounds.
Most buyers already know about your competitors. And the ones that don’t will still do their due diligence before making a purchase decision.
That’s why it’s so important to have comparison landing pages on your website. They help shape your buyers’ perspective on the landscape you operate in early in their evaluation. If you don’t, I guarantee that your competitors will jump in and shape their perspective in your place.
If you need help building your competitive comparison landing page strategy, check out this blog written by Federico Jorge. He’s the Founder of Stack Against, an agency that creates high-converting, SEO-optimized landing pages for SaaS businesses.
2. Switcher Stories
Crafting a unique narrative is all well and good, but the most powerful thing you can share with buyers are switcher stories—examples of customers who switched to you from a competitor and saw success.
And contrary to popular belief, you don’t need a bunch of fancy logos. Here’s what actually makes a good switcher story:
💡 The resolved issue aligns with your prospective client's current challenge.
💡 The company in the switcher story resembles the one you're targeting (e.g. in terms of size, industry, or use case).
💡 There's a customer quote explicitly stating their preference for your solution over a competitor's.
Full-on case studies are great, but shorter testimonials alone can be helpful too. Check out tools like UserEvidence to keep these assets organized.
Lastly, remember to build out switcher stories from the status quo. Toast does an incredible job curating these from the status quo in their landscape—the cash register. But the status quo in your landscape could be Excel, a legacy software provider, or even just doing nothing.
3. Demo deck slide
This one’s pretty straightforward, but a lot of people forget about them. Competitor slides in demo decks show buyers that you’re prepared and that your organization has considered how you differentiate.
Tactically, they also give sellers material to support how they dismiss a competitor.
You don’t need to go crazy here. Start by listing out your top differentiators in bullet form, customer logos that switched from the competitor to you, and a customer quote. Throw the slide in the appendix of your deck and only share it if prospects ask about the competitor.
4. A “How to migrate from *Competitor*” help article
One of the most common factors that prevent prospective clients from switching to your product is time. It can take a lot of time and effort to switch fully off of one tool and migrate to another—especially when that tool is supporting an existing, ongoing process.
You’ll either need to give them a really enticing reason for switching or be reasonably enticing AND showcase that the switch will be seamless.
Writing an in-depth migration help article shows that you have experience switching customers from a specific competitor and that you have a process for doing it efficiently 💪🏻.
5. Your niche/unique differentiator, visualized
A picture’s worth a thousand words. Having a strong visual isn’t always necessary for power users as they’ll need more in-depth information before making a decision. But they can be especially helpful for arming power users when they’re championing your solution to the ultimate decision-maker or buyer.
Having a quick visual that conveys your differentiation is much easier for these people since they likely won’t be spending much time using your product anyway. But, they still need to have a solid understanding of why their team wants to spend its budget on your solution (especially if they already have something in place).
Here’s a visual-forward example I put together at ClickUp to explain why teams switch from Jira.
🧠 Internal Assets
6. Battlecards
I’ll keep this one short because most people know about battlecards by now. They’re the cornerstone of most competitive intel programs and act as the one-stop shop for sales and marketing to understand the competition.
Don’t make the same mistakes I did with them though 🥲.
I used to stuff them full with as many details as possible—but with battlecards, less is definitely more. Start with the following details and then ask your teams for feedback:
Quick dismiss: 3 - 5 sentences that explain why you’re better/different than a competitor
Landmine questions: questions that you can ask a prospective buyer that will indirectly sow seeds of doubt in their mind about a competitor
External assets: links to one-pagers, case studies, landing pages, etc.
Explosive differentiators: things that customers can achieve with you that they can’t with a competitor
Pricing: most competitors will hide their enterprise pricing from their websites. Make sure you check with your sales team and, if possible, former customers of your competitor to get that information.
7. Monthly newsletter
I got my start in CI by writing an *internal* monthly newsletter. When I was a junior PMM at ZoomInfo, the CEO, Henry Schuck, asked me to send him a simple report of our competitors’ employee growth every month.
It was very simple. You can pull these numbers from any company profile on LinkedIn.
But because that was my only consistent deliverable to Henry at the time, I wanted to make it as memorable as possible. So each month, I added more details and insights to that email until it became a full-fledged newsletter.
By the end of my time at ZoomInfo, there were newsletters for every product category that we competed in. They each contained competitive news insights, mentions of our competitors by customers on demo calls (pulled from Gong/Chorus), competitive win/loss data, new collateral, insights from competitors’ G2 profiles, and more.
It’s easy to go overboard with the data that you include on these. You don’t want to send a bloated newsletter that nobody wants to read. So make sure you ask your leadership team what information is important to them and start there.
