How to write a competitor
comparison page without
declaring war
Words by Sophie Oxley | CEO at CHIEF Studio
Competitor comparisons can be incredibly valuable for prospects and for helping your product make its case. It provides a shortcut for comparison, where all roads lead to you. But how do you approach publishing one without causing unnecessary conflict or appearing unfairly brutal?
In this article, we take a look at how to do a competitive comparison tastefully and effectively.
Make sure you
take on Goliath,
not David
In most market categories, there is a Goliath; in fact, there’s usually more than one. These are players with a strong positioning through longevity in the market, a selling proposition that stuck and broke the mould of its predecessors, or both. These are your Goliaths.
But most new and scaling software products, however, aren’t quite making the Magic Quadrant yet. These are your David’s, and there are many of them, probably including you.
The trick with positioning a competitor analysis is to ensure you’re not measuring yourself against your other Davids, just trying to get a slice of the Goliath pie. When you position against peers, you achieve two things: a general feeling of animosity, which is never helpful if you’re ever planning to sell and permission for them to pitch themselves against you without apology.
Our first tip in a competitor comparison is to compare yourself to one vendor, which should be the vendor you’re most likely to come up against. They’re the de facto other party at the table, and by doing a comparison, you’re stating your case.
Do your homework, be upfront and be honest
When you open up about your strengths, you also risk revealing your shortcomings. It’s critical that if you’re going to do a competitor comparison and publish it on your website, it’s factually accurate. If you can, get a product demo, quiz them on your assumptions about the functionality and ensure your claims are justified. It’s also important to keep pace with new release announcements and updates.
If your closest competitor isn’t a heavily gated enterprise product, buy it or trial it to ensure you cover all your bases. Avoid publishing a black-and-white table comparison unless you’re absolutely sure about it. Instead, consider delivering a longer and more considered summary to explain your points in more detail. Our client, Brilliant Assessments, does this particularly well and is often complimented on the approach.
Don’t compare where you can’t compete
We always recommend erring on the side of caution if you’re comparing your product to a competitor based on a list of features. The problem with this is that everyone can have more features and unique features if they want to. But that doesn’t mean they’re all relevant to the customer. If your competitor has a whizbang AI-enabled thingy’m’whatsit that does something irrelevant (but means they can say they do an AI thing), you really don’t need to compete on it.
Focus on your strong points and the things that matter most to customers. This might not have anything to do with your product directly but to do with your approach, such as support access, security standards, B-Corp ambitions, or background expertise.
In summary
It can be easy to obsess over your competitor’s Achilles heel and run with it, but it’s important to be factually accurate, focused on what matters most to customers and take on those who are at the negotiation table rather than those who just look and sound a little like you. Competitor comparisons are highly valuable pages, great for your SEO efforts and helpful for prospects, but it’s important to keep it classy. A product brawl is a lot less entertaining than you may think.