B2B Marketing Research: How to Get Reliable Information for Competitive Positioning - Televerde

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 youre
  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 companys 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 whats 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 solutions 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. Its 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. Youve 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 cant 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 dont
  care that much about. Your company may be unique
  in one regard, but if its 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 havent
  successfully positioned your company. And if you
  dont 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.