If you’ve ever pitched your product and heard, “How are you different from competitor name?”, you’re not alone.

It’s one of the toughest and most important questions in B2B.

Buyers today are overwhelmed with choice. For nearly every business challenge, there are dozens of software vendors, consultants, or DIY solutions vying for attention.

Gartner research shows that the typical B2B buying group now involves six to ten decision-makers, each comparing multiple vendors before they even reach out to sales. The result? A noisy, confusing marketplace where differentiation is harder and more vital than ever.

In this environment, winning isn’t about shouting louder. It’s about knowing exactly who you’re selling to, understanding what alternatives they’re weighing, and crafting a story that makes your value obvious. That’s where competitive-landscape strategy meets Account-Based Marketing (ABM) and together, they form a powerful engine for growth.

The Overlooked Truth About Competition

Too many companies treat competitors as an afterthought, a slide at the end of a pitch deck or a forgotten tab in the CRM. But your buyers don’t. They compare you, side by side, with everyone else.

Ignoring that reality is expensive. Without a clear sense of how you’re positioned, deals stall, discounting rises, and marketing spend gets wasted.

When you understand your competitive landscape, however, you gain control of the comparison. You shape how buyers perceive you instead of leaving that decision to chance. According to Forrester, companies that differentiate effectively see up to 50% higher win rates in enterprise B2B segments.

Now, combine that insight with the precision of ABM, and you no longer just compete, you outmaneuver.

Why ABM and Competitive Positioning Belong Together

ABM is built on focus.

Instead of marketing to everyone, you zero in on high-value accounts; the ones most likely to convert and drive meaningful revenue. ABM treats each target account as a market of one, tailoring every message, campaign, and touchpoint to that account’s context and priorities.

But here’s where many ABM programs fall short: they focus on personalization without grounding it in a competitive context. Personalization alone doesn’t close deals. Relevance does and relevance depends on knowing what else the buyer is considering.

That’s why combining ABM with competitive-landscape strategy is so powerful. When you integrate the two, you’re not just tailoring content to the account; you’re tailoring it to their decision journey, competitive options, and perceived risks.

It’s a subtle shift, but it’s transformative.

The Three Layers of Competition

When viewed through an ABM lens, the competitive landscape isn’t just a list of rival products. It’s a hierarchy of choices your target accounts are actively weighing:

  1. Direct Competitors: Companies solving the same problem for the same ICP. These are the vendors your target account is likely evaluating alongside you.
  2. Indirect Competitors: Broader solutions that could take the same budget (e.g., a generic marketing automation platform instead of a specialised ABM tool).
  3. The Status Quo: Often your biggest competitor. Many deals are lost not to another vendor, but to inactivity, the decision to “do nothing” because change feels risky or expensive.

In ABM, understanding which layer you’re losing to determines your strategy.

  • If your account is leaning toward a direct competitor, your messaging should emphasize differentiated outcomes and proof.
  • If you’re losing to the status quo, focus on urgency and opportunity cost.
  • If the account is considering indirect options, educate them on why specialisation creates better ROI.

This is why joint sales and marketing intelligence is so important.

According to LinkedIn’s 2024 State of B2B Marketing Report, ABM programs where marketing and sales collaborate on competitive insights are 32% more likely to exceed revenue goals.

Moving Beyond Feature Battles

One of the easiest traps in B2B is the “feature war.”

Teams build side-by-side comparison charts and train reps to say, “We have X, and they don’t.” The problem? Features can be copied; stories can’t.

In an ABM strategy, every piece of communication should anchor on value narratives, not checklists.

Slack didn’t beat Microsoft Teams by claiming more chat features; it positioned itself as the operating system for modern teams, focusing on cultural adoption, integrations, and usability. That story resonated far more than bullet points.

Your ABM content; emails, landing pages, executive outreach should do the same. Focus on outcomes, philosophy, and proof.

Ask yourself:

  • What transformation does this account want to see?
  • How do we uniquely enable it?
  • What story or data point will make that real for them?

That’s competitive positioning. 

A Framework for Competitive Positioning in ABM

Here’s a practical structure for weaving competitive-landscape insights directly into your ABM playbook:

1. Map the Competitive Landscape (Per Account)

Document who your target account sees as alternatives; direct, indirect, and the status quo. Use insights from sales conversations, LinkedIn activity, RFP mentions, and review sites.

HubSpot’s State of Marketing Trends report notes that 60% of B2B marketers now use buyer-intent data and competitor mentions to refine ABM targeting.

2. Identify Perception Gaps

Where do competitors overpromise or underdeliver? This intelligence fuels your ABM creativity. For example, if a rival promises “instant integration,” but customers complain it takes months, your campaign can highlight “Go live in 30 days - guaranteed.”

3. Define Your Unique Angle

Position your solution around a distinctive value that aligns with the account’s business model; speed, scalability, risk reduction, or customer experience. Make that angle the unifying thread across your sales outreach and marketing assets.

4. Arm Your Sales Team with Stories

Your best battle cards aren’t lists; they’re customer proof points. A rep sharing how a similar client switched from a well-known competitor and saw ROI in half the time will resonate far more than a table of differences.

5. Reinforce Through Marketing

Every ABM touchpoint, ads, content, executive emails, and events, should echo the same positioning. Repetition builds authority and familiarity, two psychological anchors that shorten buying cycles.

The Risk of Ignoring Your Competitive Landscape

When companies fail to integrate competitive awareness into ABM, two dangerous patterns emerge:

  1. Commoditisation: Buyers see you as interchangeable with others and push for discounts.
  2. Blind Spots: Competitors change their narrative or launch new offerings, and you miss it which leaves your message outdated or irrelevant.

In both cases, your ROI suffers.

As Terminus notes in its State of ABM Report, organisations that continuously refresh messaging based on competitive and intent signals see 27% higher pipeline influence and 21% faster deal cycles on average.

Final Thoughts: Turn Competition Into Your Differentiator

The competitive landscape isn’t a threat, view it as a roadmap. It shows you what your buyers are seeing, where the noise lives, and where you can create clarity.

When you layer that understanding onto an ABM framework, you stop marketing in the dark. You know which accounts matter, what they care about, who they’re comparing you to, and how to make your story resonate.

Winning in B2B today isn’t about the longest feature list. It’s about having the clearest, boldest story of value which is told to the right accounts, at the right moment, in the right way.

And when you get that right, you win with consistency, confidence, and predictability.

Ready to see how sharpening your positioning within ABM can improve ROI? Run your numbers through our ROI Calculator and discover your growth potential.

Find out what your ABM strategy could achieve with competitive clarity. Book a quick demo to see how we support marketing and sales teams win with focus and precision.