Hosted by: Adam McQueen

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This episode is part of our monthly Competitive Enablement Show Live Series. Watch the full session above ^

The Sparknotes

✨ Your company’s differentiators go well beyond feature comparisons — let that shine through in your comparison pages.

“I strongly believe that every product is different, even if only slightly…but if you’re not educated enough in understanding those differences, you’ve already lost the battle.“

Near parity between products is a reality in B2B SaaS. But near parity doesn’t mean complete parity.

Every company has a different journey, different founders, different cultures. And these points should help inform your competitive comparison pages.

Building a strong comparison page needs to leverage these sorts of differences. Because they’re going to influence everything from your product and how your company shows up in sales calls and how your brand is perceived.

Your job as the one building the comparison page is to dig into how these differences relate to the pain point you’re solving for your clients.

Let the differentiators shine through in the narrative and messaging you’re creating, the tone of the copywriting.

This will help avoid the pitfall of building a page that simply shows a feature comparison chart.

Of course, if you don’t fully grasp these nuances and how they distinguish you from the competition, you might as well pack it in.

Keyword research and SEO strategy can and should inform your comparison pages

“We wanted to use Docusign as a keyword anchor because it allowed us to say ‘this is everything they are and we are the exact opposite.‘”

Case study time!

Signaturely is a relatively new company in the same space as market leader Docusign.

Signaturely is better suited for smaller businesses and independent contractors. Their solution simply won’t respond to the needs of larger organizations who work with Docusign.

That said, Federico Jorge and team used the name recognition of Docusign to their benefit.

Through keyword research, they noticed strong search traffic for phrases like “Docusign alternatives” and “Docusign versus X”.

Then, through win-loss research and looking at competitor reviews, Federico crafted a narrative that spoke to their ICP.

“Signaturely is simple and easy. Docusign is complicated and frustrating”

The “Docusign alternatives” people were searching for are simpler tools that make leaving an e-signature easy.

And Federico built a stellar comparison page highlighting why Signaturely filled that need in a way that Docusign couldn’t.

Jump right to the Signaturely versus Docusign example in Federico’s presentation here,

Featuring negative customer reviews about competitors scales the voice of customer in your favour

“Reviews are actual customers supporting what we’re trying to tell you on the comparison page. We don’t make it aggressive, we’re just trying to put the spotlight on how people feel about the competitor.”

How aggressive you want to be in your messaging vis-a-vis your competitor is your choice.

If you can be aggressive in your claims while backing them up with objective third-party data (like pointing to a customer’s website) then more power to you.

But too much unverified aggression can turn away prospects and chip away at your own company’s trust and credibility.

Of course, a good comparison page can thread this needle by including customer reviews about the competitor directly on the comparison page.

Not only do these reviews serve as essential research for messaging and narrative creation, they can directly address and reflect customer sentiment in an authentic way that messaging cannot.

In this example Federico shared during the session, his client ProcessKit competes with Asana in the project management space.

ProcessKit wins on automation. As for Asana — despite being the market leader — can be too cumbersome and require too much manual work.

It’s one thing for the product marketing team at ProcessKit to know and communicate this. But when it comes directly from verified reviews, it packs a more powerful punch.

Catch the entire recorded session on Youtube!