How do you Stand out in a Crowded Market?

That’s a question I get all the time from product marketers at my courses or conferences.

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Some say their product has no real differentiation, other than being the cheapest. But customers don’t stick with cheap if the product doesn’t deliver.

And funny enough, those same products are selling. So, if they’re selling, there is something unique about them. And it’s rarely just the price. So, what’s the issue?

More often than not, marketing and sales teams aren’t fully understanding or clearly communicating the product’s real value.

As product marketers, we have to go straight to the source: our customers.

Ask them the right questions based on what they’re really trying to get done:

👉Context: What circumstances triggered you to look for a solution?

👉Function: What specific tasks or challenges did you want this product to help you with?

👉Emotion: How did you want to feel as a result of using this product or service?

👉Friction: What frustrations were you hoping to avoid by choosing this solution?

👉 Success: How do you measure success when using this product?

👉Need: What would happen if this product didn’t exist?

Show me examples.

Of course. For example, when I worked on positioning and messaging for GoDaddy Studio, we initially thought we were competing against Canva.

Both tools help people with no design skills create graphic content.

But when we dug deeper and asked customers what they really wanted, we uncovered a key difference:

💡Canva users were often design enthusiasts who wanted to create MORE—they saw content creation as fun and wanted to easily create a lot of it.

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💡GoDaddy Studio users, on the other hand, were solopreneurs wanting to do LESS—they wanted to create content quickly and get back to focusing on growing their business.

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When we shifted our messaging to emphasize creating content fast and highlighting everything that delivered on that promise, so they could get it out of the way, it resonated so much better with them. They felt seen.

Differentiation in crowded markets doesn’t always come from the promise you’re making to the customer about how their life will be improved. It often comes from winning reasons to believe on how that promise will be delivered.

Another common issue is obsessing over competitors that your customers aren’t even considering.

Instead, focus on making your customers feel understood. To do that, you need to know how your product brings specific value to each customer group.

At TrueMotion, we were competing head-to-head with CMT, a superior competitor offering mobile telematics like us, but with additional hardware options for tracking driving behavior without the need for a mobile device.

The major objection we encountered from prospects was:

• What happens if the user leaves their phone at home? How do you still track their driving behavior without hardware?

However, CMT was also facing objections of their own:

• What happens if the user refuses to install a device in their vehicle? How do we justify the extra expense of hardware?

Change came when we shifted our product and positioning strategy to