Welcome to Evidently—the bi-weekly newsletter where I share my biggest hits (and get honest about my misses) as a first-time VP of Marketing. If this was forwarded to you, join the 4,000+ people who apparently enjoy watching me figure this job out in real time by subscribing here.

Deals feel more competitive than ever. Because they are.

Our Evidence Gap report found that 97% of buyers are evaluating multiple options, with nearly half considering four or more products.

Budgets are bigger, buyers are more confident about purchasing, and the second you make a shortlist the room gets crowded. If you don’t frame how to evaluate your product against the alternatives, someone else will.

With our recent Zealot acquisition, we have a whole lot more direct and perceived competitors.

That’s why we’ve been upping our game on competitive evidence this quarter—not just “we’re better” comparison pages, but customer-backed proof that helps buyers understand when to choose us (and when not to).

Below is exactly how we’re thinking about all of this at UserEvidence, what plays we’re running, and how you can steal them.

The goal: earn the right to frame the comparison

I don’t want “homer” content or hit pieces. Most competitors are doing real things well—otherwise they wouldn’t be popping up in sales convos.

At the same time, a lot of vendors will say they do certain things they don’t. And when buyers take their word for it, they end up disappointed.

We’re trying to own our competitive narrative without talking down to other companies in our space.

Our bar:

• Take the high road. Explain where we overlap, where we don’t, and where other tools stop and we pick up—without trash talk.

• Lead with customer proof. Quotes from people who actually switched or evaluated both sides beat the more generic “I love UserEvidence!” testimonials.

• Be early. Competitive context delivered late in the deal cycle is a Hail Mary. If we’re not shaping the lens early, we’re climbing a wall at the last minute.

Play #1: ship comparison pages that buyers actually trust

We built five new competitive pages. A few choices we made on purpose:

• Back every claim with evidence. We pulled data from the 2025 Customer Marketing Tech Landscape Report—research we collaborated with Captivate Collective on earlier this year. We pulled what real users said about each tool, layered in our own customer quotes (especially people who had switched from another tool to ours), and cross-checked with streams in Gong that flagged competitor mentions.

• Prove it before you promote it. We’ve made the pages crawlable for search and LLM discovery but haven’t added them to our site navigation yet. The goal is to validate accuracy, collect early feedback, and tighten the story before turning up the volume

• Show where we overlap and where we don’t. Each page highlights shared use cases, then gets straight to why we’re different and why it matters. The goal wasn’t to “win.” It was to help buyers see that we’re playing a different game—and decide for themselves.

How you can copy this

1. Source real language. Doing your own competitor research is hard—but having bad intel is worse. Mine win/loss notes, call transcripts, and public reviews for how customers describe differences, not how you want to.

2. Prioritize switch stories. The money quote isn’t “we love our CSM.” It’s “we were using X; it didn’t deliver; we switched to Y for A/B/C.” That’s what future buyers believe.

3. Let it live in the wild first. Leave a public trail, but run a two-week “truthing” period before you start sending more eyeballs and traffic to it.

Play #2: capture switch stories on autopilot (not at the 11th hour)

We built systems so we’re not chasing quotes in Slack at midnight before a launch.

• Deal object enrichment. We’ve worked with GTM Ops to scrape Gong transcripts and tag deals where competitors come up. Anytime someone mentions a competitor, it auto-fills a field on the opportunity. Now we’ve got clean targets for follow-up, analysis, and future campaigns.

• Event-driven surveys. We launched a loss survey in August to learn why deals slip. Next up: a win survey to capture what tipped the decision—and the language buyers actually use when they choose us.

Steal this question set for your win surveys

• “Which alternatives did you evaluate?”

• “What tipped the decision in our favor vs. [Competitor]?”

• “What did [Competitor] do well?” (Yes, ask this. Credibility > chest-thumping.)

• “What changed for you after switching?” (Time-to-value, workflow steps removed, specific integrations unlocked, etc.)

Play #3: get evidence in front of buyers earlier (and everywhere)

Only 35% of marketers create competitive battle cards—and just 32% of sellers share them. (Thanks again, Evidence Gap.)

If you’ve built the proof but no one’s using it, what’s the point?

We’ve been expanding our competitive evidence library, but the real work is making sure it shows up where it actually changes the outcome of a deal:

• Outbound & paid. SDR sequences and AE follow-ups now include “Why teams move from [Competitor] to UE” snippets with deep links to the right pages. When we’re chasing known replacement opps, paid points straight to competitor-specific pages.

• Live sales calls. Tagging our evidence library by competitor and objection makes it easy for reps to pull short, skimmable quotes in real time—something they can paste into chat or drop in a recap within minutes.

• Microsites by scenario. Using our own microsite feature, we can package focused collections (e.g. Cybersecurity teams replacing [Competitor]) so sellers send one link and buyers get a curated, hyper-relevant set of proof points.

A simple routing rule

Play #4: format for credibility (short, specific, and sometimes anonymous)

What we’ve learned (and data backs this up): buyers don’t need super polished, three-page case studies to believe you as much as they need specifics.

When evaluating the competition, they want to hear from others who’ve switched from the tool they’re using or evaluating, and why they chose yours.

• Bite-sized > big-budget. On our comparison pages, we’ve prioritized short quotes tied to one clear outcome. That’s what builds belief faster than any long-form story.

• Blinded-but-verified works. When legal or PR blocks a named quote, anonymous proof that’s been verified by a third-party still hits—and it’s usually spicier. People are more honest when their logo isn’t attached.

Test your own credibility

Read your comparison page and delete every adjective you wrote yourself.

What’s left should still convince someone. If it doesn’t, you don’t have evidence—you have opinions.

Why all of this matters

From The Evidence Gap work we’ve done, two things keep showing up:

• Almost everyone evaluates multiple vendors. Being discoverable isn’t your problem—being choosable is.

• Trust breaks on relevance. Buyers bail when vendor-created battle cards feel generic or overtly biased. The fix isn’t better messaging; it’s more specific customer evidence.

Buyers want this kind of proof. Done right, it doesn’t just lower risk—it shortens sales cycles and gives your team language that doesn’t sound like PR spin.

Stuff I’m digging this week

• Ramp’s “CFO in a glass box” stunt—Ramp livestreamed Kevin from The Office doing manual expense reports in a glass box… for six hours. The Rizzler showed up. So did The Office’s original CFO, David Wallace. They borrowed from streamers to turn a simple stunt into a full-blown event.

• Why buying has gotten easier—and selling has gotten harder—We hosted a webinar last week with a 42% show rate, tons of questions in the chat, and even more emails asking for the recording. Yes, we recorded it. It’s 2025.

• You can’t talk enough about messaging—I came across a LinkedIn post from Dave Kellogg while finishing this edition of Evidently last night, and it hit home. Too many teams treat messaging like a one-off project, then move on. Messaging isn’t something you “finish.” The market keeps moving. Your story should too.

The Highline Bet, now streaming

Episodes 1 and 2 are live. The finale drops Friday.

This docu-series captures the stress, emotion, and controlled chaos behind our biggest marketing bet of the year. If you missed Highline and want to see what all the hype was about—or if you were there and want to relive it—this one’s worth the watch.

Check out the playlist on YouTube.

Hold up—what does UserEvidence do again?

Most GTM teams spend millions on outbound, ads, and automation, but freeze the moment a buyer asks, “Do you have successful customers like us?”

Scattered quotes. Outdated decks. Burned-out references.

That’s the moment trust breaks and deals die.

UserEvidence fixes that.

We help your team turn happy customers into your strongest proof. So they can find the right story, advocate, or reference—instantly, when it matters most.

• Advocates — Activate your best customers without burning them out.

• Evidence — Verified, believable stories and results buyers actually trust.

• References — Reliable matchmaking that finds the right customer reference for the right deal.

UserEvidence makes customer proof usable by your entire GTM team—every day, on demand, when trust decides the deal.