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It's pretty easy to learn how competitors are positioning themselves, because they do it in public. So start reading and analyzing print advertisements, marketing collateral and Web sites with an eye to deducing the positioning behind them.
A positioning statement frequently appears in the first or last paragraph (or both) of an advertisement, or in a prominent place on the home page of the Web site. A good one should be a focused benefit idea or concept underpinning the executional theme of the advertisement, home page, brochure, etc.
You'll probably find that a lot of the marketing communications put out by B2B software companies aren't backed by real position. Often, they're just a brain dump of product features or vague platitudes like "be more productive" or "cut costs." They lack the heart and soul of good positioning: a meaningful benefit statement; i.e., a reason the audience should care about their product.
Once you have determined the competitors' positioning, organize the ideas or themes in a table according to the conveyed benefit statement. It is common - and a mistake - for companies to make two or more benefit claims of equal importance. Check those too. Figure 1 is a real world example of how the following mid-market and enterprise accounting and ERP software companies were positioned in mid-2005:
| Benefit |
Lawson |
MBS |
Best |
SAP |
Oracle |
SSA |
| Understand needs of small & medium businesses |
|
|
X |
|
|
|
| Understand business fundamentals |
|
|
|
X |
|
|
| Flexible, adaptable |
|
X |
X |
X |
|
|
| Affordable |
|
X |
|
|
X |
|
| Value |
X |
|
|
|
X |
|
| Rapid Implementation & ROI |
X |
|
|
|
|
X |
Figure 1
Perception maps make the competitive landscape obvious
OK. You've analyzed your competitors, and created an informative table. Now, how do you decide if there is an unclaimed gap you can claim for your own? A table won't show where, but a map will - a perceptual map of the competitive landscape. See Figure 2 below, which maps the positioning landscape for the software companies listed in the table.
The axis labels represent abstractions based on the positioning statements found in the following vendors' 2005 advertising:
By creating a perceptual map, you can easily determine whether your proposed product positioning is unique, and avoid creating me-too marketing materials that fail to set you apart from the competition. Testing your positioning statement for uniqueness is a critical step in the positioning process, but one that many B2B software marketers overlook. It gives you confidence that you've discovered the right position. |
