[Product Marketing Community Conference 2019] No company exists in a vacuum, so how are you adapting your product, sales, and marketing initiatives to succeed in that context? Competitive intelligence is more than collecting information on your competitors - it’s about taking that information and turning it into revenue-generating initiatives across product, sales and marketing.

1. How to Turn
Competitive Insight
into Revenue Growth
Ellie Mirman
CMO, Crayon
www.crayon.co
@ellieeille @crayon

2. Product Marketing as
Market Expert & master Translator
Product
Marketing
Custo
m
ers
Co
m
petito
rs
Thoughtleaders
Sales
M
arketing
ProductMGMT

3. Product marketing stakeholders
Product
Marketing
Sales
Marketing
Product
Management
Competitive Intel / Battlecards
Messaging / Collateral
Personas / Product Training
Messaging / Differentiation
Personas / Launch Campaigns
Market Trends & Feedback
Competitive Intel / Launch Campaigns

4. Action-oriented Competitive
intelligence Framework
CAPTURE
Track your competitors’
every move on and off
their website
“WHAT”
ANALYZE
Identify trends and
insights, connecting the
dots across data points
“SO WHAT”
ACT
Share relevant
insights, collaborate,
and set action items
“SO WHAT NOW”

5. Driving revenue growth
in Marketing with
competitive insight

6. Level Up Your Marketing Campaigns
CAPTURE
• Marketing campaigns
• Marketing channels
• Content published
• Social media posts
• Landing pages & forms
• Calls to action & promotions
• Public announcements

7. Level Up Your Marketing Campaigns
ANALYZE
• Areas of focus (channels, topics,
personas)
• Areas of success (high performing
content, outlets that garner
coverage)
• Opportunities for differentiation
(channels, topics, personas not
addressed)

8. Level Up Your Marketing Campaigns
ACT
• Copy tactics that work (SEO
strategies, top topics, active
channels, target outlets)
• Differentiate by leaning into gaps
in competitors’ marketing (new
topics, channels, personas)
• Look ahead – see where they’re
investing in marketing via job
openings & new hires

9. Plus…
Inform content strategy
with differentiated
messaging
Provide persona training
with real customer &
market feedback
Collaborate on product
launches with insight from
competitor launches

10. Case Study: Dozens of micro actions
per week from competitive insights
q Company had changed social media
publishing à updated social media
strategy
q Competitor was getting customer
reviews on a site they de-invested in à
discovered recent update to review site
and re-evaluated review site strategy
q Competitor product video found on
YouTube à shared with sales, execs,
product management, updated
competitive positioning
q Internal competitive intel found in
employee reviews à summarized and
shared with exec team
q Competitor’s customer services
program improved à alerted services &
exec teams to encourage development
in services to better compete
q Competitor’s content publishing
analyzed à shared trends and
developed differentiated content
strategy

11. Driving revenue growth
in Sales with
competitive insight

12. Win Competitive Deals
CAPTURE
• Product & service website content
• Product details on help sites
• Customer reviews & case studies
• Pricing & packaging details
• Marketing promotions
• Content & messaging
• Public announcements

13. Win Competitive Deals
Analyze
• Product/service benchmarks &
comparisons – strengths,
weaknesses, opportunities
• Marketing/messaging
benchmarks & comparisons –
strengths, weaknesses,
opportunities
• Win/loss analysis trends &
takeaways

14. Win Competitive Deals
ACT
• Create and update sales trainings
& competitor battlecards
• Create sales collateral, email and
presentation templates
• Provide real-time alerts with
takeaways on market changes
• Craft differentiated messaging
• Publish customer case studies &
success stories

15. Plus…
Share industry trends so
sales can speak
knowledgeably
Provide persona training
with real customer &
market feedback
Target competitors’
unhappy customers for
new business

16. Case Study: INTEL DRIVEN BATTLECARDS
Increases Win rate by 59%
§ Always out-of-date:
competitor info static and dis-
connected from intel collection
§ Time-consuming: manual data
collection consumed critical
resources
§ Hard to access: manual data
distribution via Google Sheets
not integrated with sales
§ Constant feed of intel:
automatically collecting intel
without losing productivity
§ Integrated with internal
systems: Immediate access
where the team works
§ Dynamic battlecards: Always
up-to-date battlecards yielded
59% improvement in win rate
BEFORE AFTER

17. Driving revenue growth
in Product with
competitive insight

18. Develop & Launch Winning Products
CAPTURE
• Product & service website content
• Product details on help sites
• Customer reviews & case studies
• Pricing & packaging details
• Public announcements
• Job postings & new hires

19. Develop & Launch Winning Products
Analyze
• Strengths & gaps in competitors’
products & services
• Strengths & gaps in our solutions
• Markets that are underserved,
growing markets with similar
needs
• Mistakes made & lessons learned
when serving similar customers
• Opportunities to differentiate

20. Develop & Launch Winning Products
ACT
• Fill in the gaps: provide product direction
based on market gaps
• Learn from others: share mistakes to
avoid, strategies to copy
• Differentiate: identify opportunities to
stand out
• Incorporate customer feedback: incl. from
competitors’ customers
• Look ahead: see where they’re investing
in product via job openings & new hires

21. Plus…
Share industry trends to
inform future product
investment
Provide persona training
with real customer &
market feedback
Collaborate on product
launches with insight from
competitor launches

22. Case Study: Connecting the Dots
to stay competitive
Website Change #1
Product Functionality
Website Change #2
Product Functionality
Team Change
Company Investment
Competitor moving in
on a differentiator /
company advantage
Re-evaluate Product Roadmap
to increase gap between
competitor’s solutions and stay
competitive ahead of product
launch announcements

23. A few Best Practices

24. Best Practice:
know each team’s priorities
Sales
Marketing
Product
Management
“We want to launch a
campaign to attract more
of Persona Patty”
“We’re expanding in the
Enterprise and need to
battle new competitors”
“We’re developing this
feature next, what’s in
the market now?”

25. Best Practice:
Multiple levels of outputs
1. Always up-to-date resources (reference)
2. Updates on key changes (digests)
3. Urgent announcements (alerts with takeaways)
4. Long term analyses
5. CI workspace

26. Best Practice:
Set Goals, Measure Impact, Get feedback
Top 10 Goals & KPIs for CI
1. Revenue
2. Sales win rate
3. Marketing campaign results
4. Sales usage of CI materials
5. Brand awareness
6. Market share
7. Exec’s market understanding
8. Early warning of market shifts
9. Number of research projects
requested & used
10. Competitive differentiation
feedback
Source: 2019 State of Competitive Intelligence Report

27. 1. Capture the “what” – each competitor’s every
move on & off their website
2. Analyze the “so what” to identify the meaning
of each move, connect the dots & spot trends
3. Drive action by providing the “so what now” –
recommendations for each department to win
Turn Competitive Insight Into Revenue Growth

28. 1. Help Marketing level-up their campaigns by sharing
opportunities to copy or differentiate based on competitors’
campaigns
2. Help Sales win more deals by arming them with real-time
intel & up-to-date resources on competitors’ solutions,
marketing activities, & win/loss insights
3. Help Product develop the best products by providing
context on competitors’ strengths & gaps in the market to
serve the market’s needs & stand out
Turn Competitive Insight Into Revenue Growth

29. Thank You
Ellie Mirman
CMO, Crayon
linkedin.com/in/elliemirman
@ellieeille @crayon
Get the Slides &
Related Resources at
www.crayon.co/PMC19