B2B marketing research serves many purposes. One major function is to find the right competitive positioning. By doing so, you can ensure you’re communicating to the appropriate target market and are effectively differentiating your company from its competitors. Take a look at this presentation on b2b marketing research from Larry Fleischman, Director of Marketing for Televerde, a leading B2B provider of sales pipeline development solutions. For more information about lead generation programs, visit http://www.Televerde.com today.

1. B2B Marketing Research
How to Get Reliable Information for
Competitive Positioning

2. B2B Marketing Research
B2B marketing research serves many purposes.
One major function is to find the right
competitive positioning. By doing so, you can
ensure you’re communicating to the appropriate
target market and are effectively differentiating
your company from its competitors. But how do
you go about deciding how to position your
company’s brand against the competition?

3. B2B Marketing Research
Finding the right answer to this question can impact the
success of your marketing programs. And with most
marketplaces becoming increasingly competitive, your
B2B marketing research has to be spot-on. Constant
review and adjusting of your competitive positioning
strategies need to become an established practice.

4. B2B Marketing Research
How to Use B2B Marketing Research to Determine
Competitive Positioning
To find the proper positioning of your brand against your
competitors, you need to focus your research in three
areas. First, you need to find out what’s important to
your target market. What features do they value and
what benefits are they looking to gain? What challenges
are they facing today and may have to deal with in the
future?

5. B2B Marketing Research
Next, your B2B marketing research must help you
determine how your product or service stacks up against
your prospects’ requirements. Do your product features
meet or exceed what your prospects need? Do they
produce the benefits they would expect to achieve?
Finally, you need to conduct B2B marketing research on
your key competitors. Just as you compared your
solution’s performance to prospect requirements, you
need to do the same with your competitors’ products.

6. B2B Marketing Research
Answers to these questions can help you start fine-tuning a
positioning strategy. Your research must produce as much
detail as possible to draw meaningful conclusions. It’s a good
idea to develop a framework for the information gathered. In
other words, you want to organize your findings in a way that
strengths and weaknesses surface for both you and your
competitors’ products.
When your B2B marketing research highlights these findings,
you can develop positioning strategies much easier. You’ve
got very useful and valuable information to properly
determine competitive positioning.

7. B2B Marketing Research
For example, does your solution do something your
competitors’ does not? Is your service better? Do you have
unique capabilities within your organization that your
competitors can’t provide? Your B2B marketing research
should generate the information you need to highlight how
you are different from your competitors.
You want to develop your content around those differences.
Highlighting your strengths not available from the competition
should be a focus. And, any deficiency in your solution should
be shored up and re-positioned in your messaging and value
proposition.

8. B2B Marketing Research
Some Considerations When Finding Your Competitive Position
Make sure you focus on what your prospective customers find
important. Your B2B marketing research should provide this
information and make it easy to identify. Some companies get
misguided by developing their positioning based on a certain
attribute prospects really don’t care that much about. Your
company may be unique in one regard, but if it’s not
important to prospects, your competitive positioning will be
off.

9. B2B Marketing Research
Also, you want to bridge any gaps between what you think
your prospects know about your capabilities. You want to
determine your strengths your company has that are also
important to your prospects. Then, you want to make sure
your prospects see your company as having those strengths.
In some cases, a disconnect exists between how a company
thinks its prospects see them. You want to make sure your
competitive positioning is based on what you and your
prospects know as your strengths. You need to promote your
attributes to the market, especially if your competitors are
deficient in this area.

10. B2B Marketing Research
The most important aspect of B2B marketing research when
determining competitive positioning is to find an attribute
your company can be associated with and rise to number one
in terms of mind share. Think about some examples in the
market today. Volvo is by-far the one automaker associated
with safety and Google is the first company that comes to
mind with search.
If your competitors do the same or better as you in your
positioning attribute, then you haven’t successfully positioned
your company. And if you don’t have the unique attribute,
you need to create it.

11. About the Author
Larry Fleischman is Director of Marketing for
Televerde, a leading B2B provider of sales
pipeline development solutions. For more
information about B2B Marketing Research ,
visit http://www.Televerde.com today.