Every week, Jason Oakley and Aubrey Chapnick share 5 practical product marketing examples. It's your weekly dose of PMM inspiration and practical advice in less than 3 minutes.
PMM Files # 155 - Five examples of how to differentiate
Thanks for reading PMM Files. A newsletter where we share five cool product marketing examples we found last week.
This issue is all about the big D Word... Differentiation! Something every PMM team is thinking about today more than ever.
Let's get to it...
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The "Solo PMM" secret to scaling competitive intel
Youβre a Solo PMM. Outnumbered, overworked. Your battlecards are ancient. Stop being a manual web-scraper. Elevate your role with Steve. Heβs your 24/7 AI research partner who monitors every move, sums up the changes, and updates your battlecards. Become the strategic force sales depends on.
Thatβs real positioning β not just chest-thumping about features.
In this beehiiv vs Kit comparison, they call out exactly who Kit serves well, then make a clear case for beehiivβs sweet spot. No "we're for everyone" baloney, just clarity that helps buyers self-select.
The takeaway: Be honest about who should pick your competitor. It builds way more trust than pretending youβre the answer for everyone.
Example #3 - Differentiate on How You Run the Business
Buffer competes with Sprout Social, Hootsuite, and a long list of VC-backed social media tools. Instead of trying to out-feature them, they've chosen a different (or addiitonal) path β differentiating based on how they run their business.
Simon Heaton breaks down company financials and makes it clear, Buffer isn't the typical VC-backed startup who lets the will of their investors get in the way of delivering for customers and employees.
It's an interesting framing that helps Buffer stand out and creates an emotional connection that goes beyond product.
I've seen a bunch of these posts following the big product announcements from Claude recently. This time, Brad Jourdrie takes aim at defending his company, Conquest Planning.
I love how Brad acknowledges how big of a deal Claude's release was while also clearly explaining why it's not going to replace Conquest: auditability, consistency, and verifiable quality.
To put a cherry on it, he ends with a strong POV: "The wealth tech firms that win the next phase won't be the ones who deployed AI fastest. They'll be the ones who deployed it in a way their compliance teams, their regulators, and their clients can trust."
Example #5 - The "Better Together" Comparison Page
Not every competitor page needs to be a takedown. Sometimes the smarter play is a "better together" story.
Sybill does this well with their Gong comparison page. Instead of trying to convince teams to rip out Gong, they position around what they call "the Gong gap" and why Sybill is additive, not duplicative.
It's very smart positioning. By acknowledging what Gong is good at, they make their own differentiation sharper and remove the "We already have Gong" objection.
Elevate your role from data collector to strategic partner.
"Is this up to date?" It's the Slack message you dread on a small team with a massive competitive landscape.
As a PMM in a small team, youβre responsible for everything from messaging, to launches, to sales enablement. You know your battlecards are getting dusty, but who has time to check 15 competitor websites every week?
It's time you met Steve.
Heβs the AI research agent built to give small teams "Big Tech" competitive powers. Steve monitors the field, filters the noise, and updates your battlecards automatically.
Stop acting like a manual web-scraper. Elevate your role from "data collector" to "strategic partner." Let Steve handle the grunt work so you can focus on the positioning that actually wins deals.
βTurn CI Strategy Into Deals - Talya Heller shares a simple framework for turning your competitive intel into a one-pager your sales team will love. β
βBuild Better B2B Landing Pages - Tas Bober shares a simple framework for deciding what actually belongs on your landing page β and what to cut.
What did you think of this week's edition?
Hit reply and let me know, or leave a quick testimonial. I'd love to hear from you!
See you next Wednesday!
P.S.
We work with startups and founding PMMs that are trying to build product marketing from zero. If that sounds like you, here are some ways we can help:
βThe Jetpack is a library of templates, playbooks, and examples. β
βThe Foundry is a group coaching program for founding PMMs. β
Want to sponsor our newsletter? Let's chat!β β
Every week, Jason Oakley and Aubrey Chapnick share 5 practical product marketing examples. It's your weekly dose of PMM inspiration and practical advice in less than 3 minutes.