What Matters and What Doesn’t for Competition in B2B Marketing
Competition is unavoidable. It's not if you'll face it, but how you'll navigate it. Your approach to understanding and responding to competitors can significantly shape your success.
Some businesses track every competitor move obsessively, while others prefer to ignore them entirely, focusing solely on their customers. But what's the most effective path? Is focusing solely on customers enough when those customers are actively comparing you to others?
On a recent episode of the Attributed Podcast, Andy McCotter-Bicknell, Head of Competitive Intelligence at Apollo.io and the creator of Healthy Competition, explained where B2B marketers should focus their attention when it comes to competition.
Keep reading for all the takeaways or listen to the entire conversation here.
What is Competitive Intelligence in B2B marketing?
Before diving in, let's clarify what competitive intelligence means in this context.
Andy explained that it isn't about obsessively tracking rivals out of defensiveness or ignorance. It’s also not something to dismiss by saying "we only focus on customers" or "our real competitor is the status quo".
While understanding the status quo is important, Andy cautions that this can sometimes be an excuse to avoid the deeper work of understanding actual vendors vying for your customers' attention.
Instead, think of competitive research and customer research as two sides of the same coin.
You can't truly understand your customer without knowing who else they're considering.
Likewise, studying competitors without understanding how customers perceive them is ineffective.
Effective competitive intelligence involves understanding the market through the lens of your customer: What options are they aware of? What do they think about those options? What influences their decisions?
Why competitive intelligence matters more than ever
Historically, competitive insights might have been confined to executive or board meetings. But today, Andy referenced the "Martech 5000" (now likely over 10,000 or even 20,000 tools) as an example of the overwhelming number of choices buyers face.
This sprawl makes it harder to buy than to sell sometimes.
In this crowded market, it's crucial that your entire organization (sales, marketing, and product) is aligned on who the key competitors are and how you differentiate in ways that resonate with customers.
How to get started with competitive intelligence
If your company is new to structured competitive intelligence, Andy suggests these starting points:
Talk to your customers (and potential customers): This is the single most important step. Speak with those who evaluated multiple options, including yours. Ask open-ended questions about their experience:
What was happening when you decided you needed a solution like this?
What were your key evaluation criteria? What did a tool need to do?
Understand why they chose a specific solution.
Don't be afraid to reach out to users of competitor products (via LinkedIn, etc.) to learn directly from them. Be upfront about who you are and offer an incentive if needed.
Align Internally: Ensure the insights gathered are genuinely useful. Talk to sales, marketing leaders, and even executives to understand what competitive information they find valuable.
Distribute Effectively: Competitive intelligence is only valuable if the right people see it. Set up clear distribution channels like internal newsletters, dedicated Slack channels, regular updates in team meetings, or specific reports for leadership.
How many B2B competitors should you monitor?
With potentially hundreds of vendors in adjacent spaces, trying to track everyone spreads resources too thin.
Andy advises focusing your deep monitoring efforts. At Apollo, despite being an all-in-one tool touching many categories, the core competitive intelligence team closely tracked only five to seven key competitors. At ClickUp, it was even fewer, three tier-one rivals.
The key is relevance, meaning focus on competitors that genuinely influence customer decisions.
If a competitor exists only in theory or rarely impacts deals, they probably don't warrant intensive tracking.
For less frequent or niche competitors, consider grouping them into "buckets" based on product type or company size, developing general positioning points against each bucket rather than unique strategies for every minor player.
Gathering and using competitive intelligence in marketing
For marketing teams, competitive intelligence is critical for positioning and messaging. You need to ensure your message stands out, rather than accidentally echoing your competitors. When brands sound the same, it confuses customers.
So differentiate your messaging from your competitors. Before major launches or website revamps, analyze how your top competitors talk about similar features or value propositions.
Instead of relying only on internal jargon, leverage the language customers actually use. Andy recommends analyzing customer reviews and sales call transcripts to understand customer pains, desired outcomes, and how they describe solutions in their own words. Use this language in your marketing copy.
Competitive Comparison Pages
If running competitive ad campaigns, direct traffic to well-structured comparison pages . Stick to objective, verifiable truths. Avoid misleading claims, adding a "last updated" date can add credibility and context .
Equip sales with battle cards that work
Competitive intelligence needs to be practical for sales teams on the front lines.
Forget long, complex documents sellers won't read. Andy stresses keeping battle cards simple and actionable, focusing on three key things:
When they appear: Understand the typical scenario or use case where this specific competitor comes up in conversation.
Key differentiators: Highlight 2-3 ways your product is meaningfully different for the customer's specific situation. A feature difference doesn't matter if the customer doesn't care about it.
Similarities: This is often missed but crucial. Acknowledge where you are similar to ease the customer's fear of change. Reinforce familiarity before introducing the differentiators
Tracking Competitor Mentions in Sales Calls
Many tools allow tracking mentions. However, be mindful of competitor names that are also common words. To improve accuracy, Andy suggests tracking variations or using filters to exclude irrelevant contexts.
The frequency of mentions can help prioritize which competitors need battle cards or closer attention.
The future of competitive intelligence
Competitive intelligence is evolving, and Andy sees two shifts on the horizon.
First, companies will increasingly invest in dedicated competitive intelligence roles, recognizing the function as essential rather than optional.
Second, AI-powered competitive intelligence tools will become more advanced, allowing teams to track competitors more effectively.
However, Andy cautions that today's general AI agents for competitive intelligence often provide very generic output.
The future, he suggests, lies in AI augmenting human analysis, providing a head start, and identifying patterns, rather than fully replacing the strategic thinking and market understanding of a skilled professional.
Conclusion
Effectively navigating the competition in B2B marketing requires developing a structured approach to understand who your customers are really considering and why.
By focusing your intelligence gathering on customer perspectives, equipping your teams with actionable insights, and distributing that knowledge effectively, you can ensure your message cuts through the noise and resonates with the buyers that matter most.
About the speaker
Andy McCotter-Bicknell is a seasoned expert in competitive intelligence, particularly within the B2B tech realm. With a foundation in product marketing, Andy built and led the competitive intelligence functions at major SaaS companies. Andy also shares his knowledge through Healthy Competition, a community and newsletter he created for competitive intelligence practitioners and product marketers.
