Competitive Displacement: The Future of Marketing and Sales is Here

In today’s world, your ideal customers already have a version of what you’re selling. They already have a solution to their problem.Which means your job is no longer to sell them a solution… it’s to sell them a better solution.This involves creating fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) and dis-satisfaction for your competitor’s product.From email marketing to cloud hosting, the biggest fish have already been caught.This means you’re now in the business of competitive displacement.If you don’t think you are, your competitors sure do. Just google your company’s name and see how many Google Ads campaigns are set up against your company name and keywords.Why is competitive displacement heating up? Beyond why, how can you weaponize B2B data to execute smarter competitive marketing campaigns to displace your competitors?

What is competitive displacement and marketing?

Competitive displacement is the act of convincing companies to make a shift from their existing solutions to yours.Organizations utilize competitive marketing tactics and campaigns to shift loyalty. Competitive marketing can be everything from deploying a cold email campaign to companies who use your competitors to hosting industry events and inviting your competitor’s customers.To find success today, you must deeply understand who your competitors are and why your solution is better. If you can’t, you’re doomed to fail.But…how do you get started with or lean further into, competitive displacement?

The Role of Data in Competitive Marketing

In the fiercely competitive landscape of modern marketing, data is not just a tool; it's the linchpin of strategy and execution. It empowers businesses to engage in what's known as competitive displacement and effective competitive marketing. Drawing parallels to an athlete studying their rival's previous performances, understanding the nuances of your competition's strategies, strengths, and vulnerabilities is paramount. But what kind of data should companies be zeroing in on to gain that competitive edge?

Competitor and Customer Discovery

A comprehensive analysis of your competitors and their customer base is crucial. Understanding who is purchasing from them provides insights into market segmentation and product fit. For instance, if Competitor A predominantly serves small and medium businesses (SMBs), while Competitor B has a stronghold with enterprise clients, this knowledge can inform tailored strategies for capturing untapped segments.

Product Features

In-depth knowledge of your competitor's product offerings and recent updates is essential. Without this understanding, how can you convincingly argue that your solution is superior? This goes beyond mere feature comparison to encompass the user experience, integration capabilities, and technological innovation.

Organizational DNA

Each company possesses a unique organizational DNA that influences its product development, marketing, and sales strategies. Identifying whether a competitor is engineering-driven or marketing-oriented, for instance, can provide valuable context for your own positioning and go-to-market approach.

Intent Data

Analyzing intent data related to competitors can unveil market dynamics, such as the distribution of spending (share of wallet) among different players and early indicators of shifts in market preferences or trends. This proactive stance enables companies to anticipate changes rather than react to them.

Marketing Campaigns Analysis

Gaining a granular understanding of a competitor's marketing strategy involves scrutinizing their advertising efforts across all channels. This includes social media, PPC, email marketing, and more. By analyzing the content, messaging, and targeting of these campaigns, companies can refine their own strategies to better resonate with their target audience.

Company News and Key Hires

Staying abreast of significant organizational changes within competitor companies, such as executive hires or layoffs, can offer a competitive advantage. These events can signal strategic shifts, openings in the market, or changes in operational focus that savvy companies can leverage to their advantage.

Keywords and Content Analysis

Monitoring changes in the keywords and phrases competitors use in their content marketing efforts can reveal shifts in positioning or the exploration of new markets. This type of data, easily aggregated through automation, allows for dynamic adjustments in B2B lead generation campaigns and content strategies.

This can easily be tracked using automation and any B2B lead generation campaigns.

Executing on Your Competitive Advantages

We’re in an all-out war for keeping customers and stealing them from competitors. Every great leader knows that you should never compete on other people’s strengths. By diving deep and using data to understand your competitors, you can easily understand how to best position your organization against your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses.Data is information and information is power. But, in this fast-paced world, your competitors are moving fast. To scale your competitive marketing, you need to leverage automation and a programmatic approach – sitting on a foundation of always-on, continuously updated competitive intelligence data.While it can be difficult to obtain competitive intelligence triggers to drive competitive kill campaigns to steal your competitor’s customers, it’s not impossible. LeadGenius focuses on crafting custom and programmatic data solutions that enable you to understand your competitors, know their product features, and get clear insights into their customers. Beyond finding a data partner for your competitive intelligence and marketing, you should always be doing internal competitive intelligence like having someone in the company utilizing or keeping up to date with a competitor’s tools and tech.