I launched a martech product into a category with 8,000 competitors according to the latest landscape graphic.
Eight. Thousand.
The first customer call went like this:
Customer: "This looks interesting. What does it do?"
Me: "It's a customer data platform that unifies your marketing data for better personalization."
Customer: "So like Segment?"
Me: "Similar, but we focus on..."
Customer: "We already use Segment. And Salesforce. And HubSpot. And Google Analytics. And Mixpanel. Why should I replace five tools with your one tool when I'd still need the other tools anyway?"
Me: silence
I'd spent ten years in SaaS marketing. I thought I understood competitive positioning. Martech taught me I understood nothing.
In most SaaS categories, you're competing with 5-10 direct competitors. In martech, you're competing with:
- 50+ direct competitors in your specific subcategory
- 200+ adjacent tools that overlap with parts of your functionality
- The massive stack of tools your prospect already uses
- Integration complexity that makes switching nightmarish
- "We'll just build it ourselves" because they have developers
And everyone claims to do the same thing: "360-degree customer view with AI-powered insights and seamless integrations."
How do you differentiate when everyone sounds identical?
Why Martech/Adtech PMM Is Uniquely Brutal
After three years launching martech products, I learned this category is different from every other software vertical:
Category Definitions Are Meaningless
In most SaaS categories, when you say "CRM," people know what you mean. When you say "accounting software," the category is clear.
In martech, category boundaries are fiction.
We called ourselves a "customer data platform." So did 40 other companies. But we all did completely different things:
- Some were data warehouses with a marketing wrapper
- Some were tag management systems that called themselves CDPs
- Some were identity resolution platforms
- Some were reverse ETL tools
- Some were actually customer data platforms
The category label was useless for differentiation.
I learned this when prospects said: "We already have a CDP."
I'd ask: "Which one?"
They'd name a tool that wasn't really a CDP but called itself one. When I explained the differences, they looked at me like I was splitting hairs.
In martech, you can't rely on category positioning because categories are too broad and poorly defined.
I had to stop saying "We're a CDP" and start explaining specifically what we did:
Old positioning: "We're a customer data platform for marketing teams." (Too broad, sounds like everyone else)
New positioning: "We connect your product usage data to your marketing tools so you can send behavior-triggered campaigns without engineering help." (Specific problem, specific solution, specific buyer)
This was 3x longer than traditional positioning, but it was clear.
Buyers Have Massive Tool Sprawl
The average marketing team uses 15-20 different tools. Enterprise teams use 50+.
This creates a weird dynamic: Buyers hate tool sprawl but keep adding tools.
Every conversation included: "We have too many tools. We need to consolidate."
Followed immediately by: "But we can't replace [existing tool] because it does [specific thing] that nothing else does."
Martech buyers want consolidation in theory. In practice, they optimize for "best of breed" in every category, which creates more sprawl.
I've lost deals where we had better functionality than three tools they were using combined. They didn't consolidate. They kept the three tools and added ours because we did one thing those tools didn't do.
The result: martech customers don't replace tools. They add tools. Then they hate having so many tools. Then they add another tool to manage the tools.
This killed traditional competitive displacement messaging:
What doesn't work: "Replace your analytics, activation, and personalization tools with one platform." (Sounds great but customers won't actually do this)
What works: "Add behavior-triggered campaigns to your existing stack with one integration instead of rebuilding your data pipeline." (Acknowledges their reality, offers incremental value)
Integration Complexity Is a Competitive Moat
Martech tools integrate with everything. Our platform integrated with 200+ tools: CRMs, analytics platforms, data warehouses, ad platforms, email providers, payment processors.
Prospects loved this initially: "You integrate with everything we use!"
Then they realized integration complexity meant switching was nearly impossible.
One prospect had built 40+ workflows connecting five martech tools. Data flowed from product analytics to their CDP to their email platform to their CRM, with custom transformations at each step.
Replacing any single tool meant rebuilding 40 workflows. The switching cost was hundreds of engineering hours.
They stuck with tools they openly admitted were inferior because migration risk was too high.
In martech, integration complexity creates switching costs that make competition almost impossible.
This changed my entire competitive strategy. I stopped trying to displace incumbents. I focused on two scenarios:
Scenario 1: Net-new capability. If we did something they couldn't do with existing tools, they'd add us to the stack.
Scenario 2: New companies building stacks. Early-stage companies with small stacks were willing to switch. Established companies with complex integrations wouldn't.
We segmented our market accordingly and stopped wasting time on displacement deals we couldn't win.
Everyone Claims the Same Benefits
Every martech tool promises:
- "360-degree customer view"
- "Personalization at scale"
- "AI-powered insights"
- "Seamless integrations"
- "Real-time activation"
These phrases are meaningless because everyone uses them.
I made this mistake in our initial messaging. I wrote: "Get a complete customer view with AI-powered personalization across all channels."
Our competitor wrote almost the identical sentence.
When buyers reviewed three vendors, our messaging was indistinguishable.
In martech, you can't differentiate on generic benefits. You need specific use cases.
I rebuilt our messaging around concrete scenarios:
Instead of: "360-degree customer view" We said: "See which product features a user tested before they upgraded so you can optimize your in-app messaging."
Instead of: "Personalization at scale" We said: "Send different email campaigns to free users showing high engagement vs. low engagement based on their actual product behavior."
Instead of: "AI-powered insights" We said: "Automatically identify which user actions predict churn in the next 30 days."
Same underlying capabilities. Specific, concrete application.
The specificity made our differentiation credible because competitors couldn't claim the exact same thing.
Technical Buyers Want to Build, Not Buy
Martech buyers often have strong technical teams. And technical teams believe they can build marketing tools.
I've had countless conversations like this:
Marketing team: "We love your product. Let's buy it."
Engineering team: "We can build this ourselves in two sprints. Don't buy it."
Three months later: Engineering team: "This was more complex than we thought. It's going to take longer."
Six months later: Marketing team: "Engineering still hasn't delivered. Maybe we should buy the tool after all."
Engineering team: "We're 80% done. Don't buy it now."
The deal dies.
Engineering teams chronically underestimate martech complexity and overestimate their ability to build it.
I learned to involve engineering early and position based on their opportunity cost:
"Your engineers could build this. It'll take 400 engineering hours based on what our platform does. That's 10 weeks for one engineer or 5 weeks for two engineers.
Is this the highest-value use of engineering time? Or should they be building features for your product while we handle marketing infrastructure?"
This framing worked better than arguing about build quality or time-to-market.
What Actually Works in Martech/Adtech PMM
After three years and hundreds of failed positioning attempts, here's what works:
Position Against a Specific Problem, Not a Category
Don't say: "We're the best CDP."
Say: "If you're trying to send product usage data to your marketing tools without rebuilding your data pipeline every time, we solve that."
Specific problem positioning works because:
- Buyers immediately know if they have that problem
- You're not competing with 8,000 tools, just the ones solving that specific problem
- You can demonstrate expertise in solving that problem
We stopped competing in the "CDP" category and started competing in the "product data activation" category—a category we basically invented.
This narrowed our addressable market but made our positioning 10x clearer.
Build for One Integration Ecosystem, Then Expand
Every martech tool claims to integrate with everything. Most integrations are shallow and barely work.
We took a different approach: Go deep in one ecosystem first.
We built incredibly tight integration with Segment. If you used Segment, our platform felt like a native extension. Setup took 10 minutes instead of 10 days.
This gave us a wedge:
"If you use Segment for customer data, we're the easiest way to activate that data in your marketing tools."
We dominated the "Segment ecosystem" niche. Then we expanded to other CDPs.
This is counterintuitive—you think you need to integrate with everything to compete. Actually, you win by integrating deeply with one thing better than anyone else.
Create Category-Specific Content, Not Generic Thought Leadership
Every martech blog publishes the same content:
- "5 Ways to Improve Personalization"
- "The Future of Marketing Technology"
- "How to Build a Customer-Centric Strategy"
This content is useless for differentiation.
We created hyper-specific content:
- "How to Send Slack Alerts When High-Value Users Downgrade" (actual workflow guide)
- "Connecting Amplitude to Braze Without Engineering Help" (specific integration tutorial)
- "Building Churn Campaigns Based on Product Behavior, Not Demographics" (specific use case)
This content attracted people with those exact problems. When they arrived, we were the only solution addressing their specific need.
One guide—"Sending Behavior-Triggered Emails from Product Analytics Data"—drove 25% of our inbound pipeline because it solved a specific problem that general content didn't address.
Build Proof Around Speed to Value, Not Features
Martech buyers have been burned by implementation nightmares. They've signed contracts for tools that took 6 months to implement and never delivered value.
Speed to value became our primary differentiator:
"First campaign sent in under 60 minutes after signup."
We'd do live implementations in demos. Prospect gives us their data. We connect it to their email tool. They send their first campaign. All in the demo call.
This was more convincing than any feature list because it proved we wouldn't become another failed martech implementation.
Use Customer Language, Not Vendor Jargon
Martech vendors love jargon: "omnichannel orchestration," "identity resolution," "data activation."
Customers don't talk like that.
When I interviewed customers about why they bought, they said:
"We needed to know what people do in our app so we could email them about it."
Not: "We needed omnichannel behavioral data activation."
I rewrote all our messaging using customer language:
Vendor jargon: "Activate behavioral data across marketing channels"
Customer language: "Send emails about what people do in your app"
Our demo request conversion improved 40% when we removed jargon and used plain language.
Managing all these different positioning frameworks, integration-specific materials, and use case content created organizational chaos. I started using tools like Segment8 to keep competitive intel and messaging organized—being able to export different positioning versions for different integration ecosystems (Segment users vs. mParticle users vs. Rudderstack users) saved hours every week versus managing separate documents.
The Unexpected Advantages of Martech
Despite the brutal competition, martech has advantages:
TAM is massive. Every company does marketing. The addressable market is huge even if you own a tiny niche.
Expansion revenue is high. Martech pricing scales with usage. As customers grow, your revenue grows. Our net revenue retention was 140%.
Network effects are real. More integrations make your platform more valuable. Once you have integration breadth, new competitors struggle to catch up.
Technical buyers are sophisticated. They evaluate products rigorously, but once they choose you, they're committed and unlikely to switch.
Two years after that first brutal customer call where I couldn't explain why they should replace their five tools, we'd completely rebuilt our positioning.
We stopped trying to replace tools. We positioned as the connector between product data and marketing tools.
We stopped competing in the CDP category. We created the "product data activation" category.
We stopped claiming generic benefits. We built specific workflows that solved concrete problems.
The customer conversation changed:
Customer: "What does it do?"
Me: "If you're trying to send email campaigns based on what users do in your product, we connect your product analytics to your email tool without engineering help. First campaign sent in under an hour."
Customer: "Oh, we've been trying to do that for six months. Our engineers keep saying it's on the roadmap but never build it."
Me: "Want to see it work in the next 30 minutes?"
That's the martech playbook:
- Position against a specific problem, not a broad category
- Go deep in one integration ecosystem before going broad
- Create specific content for specific use cases
- Prove speed to value, not feature completeness
- Use customer language, not vendor jargon
The competition is brutal. The categories are crowded. The differentiation is hard.
But if you position specifically enough and solve a real problem faster than anyone else, you can win even in a market with 8,000 competitors.
You just have to stop trying to beat all 8,000 of them and instead dominate one specific niche.
That's how you cut through martech competition.