The Competitor Targeting Playbook
Build campaigns targeting your competitors' audiences
Your competitors have already done the hard work of identifying and attracting your target market. Competitor targeting lets you reach the people who are already in market, already evaluating solutions, and already spending money on the problem you solve. You just need to give them a reason to look at you instead.
Why Competitor Audiences Are Warm
A prospect who follows your competitor, uses their product, or engages with their content has already done three things you normally have to fight for: they recognized the problem, decided it is worth solving, and started evaluating solutions.
That is 80% of the sales cycle. Done for you. For free.
Compare that to a completely cold prospect who may not even know they have the problem yet. The effort required to move them from "unaware" to "evaluating solutions" is enormous. Competitor audiences skip that entire journey.
The conversion math: prospects sourced from competitor audiences book meetings at 2x to 3x the rate of cold lists. Because they are already in buying mode. You are not creating demand. You are redirecting it.
Identifying Your Competitors
You need at least 3 competitors with active social presence to build a meaningful targeting operation. More is better. 5 to 8 is ideal.
What Counts as a Competitor
- Direct competitors. Companies selling the same thing to the same people. Obvious choices.
- Adjacent competitors. Companies solving a related problem for the same buyer. If you sell cold email services, a sales training company is an adjacent competitor. Same buyer, different solution.
- Aspirational competitors. Larger companies your prospects look up to or compare you against, even if you do not compete directly. Their audience overlaps with your ICP.
Qualifying a Competitor for Targeting
Not every competitor is worth targeting. Check these boxes:
- Active LinkedIn presence (posting at least weekly)
- Engagement from your ICP (not just random followers)
- Publicly visible customer base (case studies, testimonials, reviews)
- Enough scale that their audience is worth the effort (1,000+ followers from your target market)
A competitor with 500 followers and no engagement is not worth monitoring. Focus on the ones with active, engaged audiences that match your ICP.
- Start with direct competitors. They have the highest overlap with your ICP.
- Adjacent competitors often have audiences that nobody else is targeting. Lower competition for attention.
- Review your competitors quarterly. New players enter. Old ones go quiet.
Using DiscoLike for Vector Search and Lookalikes
DiscoLike is the core tool for competitor targeting. It uses vector search to find companies and contacts that look like your competitors' customers.
Seed Domain Lists
Start by building a seed list of 20 to 50 domains. These are your competitors' known customers, partners, and engaged audience members. Sources:
- Competitor case studies and testimonial pages
- G2, Capterra, and TrustRadius reviewer companies
- LinkedIn engagement (who comments on and shares competitor content)
- Conference attendee lists where your competitor sponsored or spoke
Vector Search
Feed the seed domains into DiscoLike. The vector search engine analyzes company attributes (industry, size, tech stack, growth signals) and finds lookalikes across the entire B2B universe. You get companies that match the profile of your competitor's customers but are not yet in their orbit.
ICP Text for Vector Search
Write a 2 to 3 sentence description of your ideal customer. Be specific. Not "B2B SaaS companies" but "Series A to C B2B SaaS companies with 50 to 200 employees, selling to mid market, actively hiring SDRs or AEs, using Salesforce or HubSpot." The more specific the ICP text, the better the vector search results.
- Start with 20 to 50 seed domains. Fewer than 20 gives the algorithm too little to work with.
- Include a mix of company sizes in your seed list. All enterprise or all SMB produces narrow results.
- Run vector search with different ICP texts to find adjacent segments you might have missed.
Phrase Match Terms and Universe Sizing
Phrase match terms narrow vector search results to companies that use specific language on their website, job postings, or marketing materials. This is where you go from "companies that look like your competitor's customers" to "companies actively talking about the problem you solve."
Building Phrase Match Terms
- Pull language from your competitor's website (how they describe the problem)
- Check job postings from target companies (what skills and tools they hire for)
- Mine LinkedIn comments for common phrases your ICP uses
- Use customer interviews and sales call transcripts for natural language
Universe Sizing
After running vector search with phrase match terms, you should have a universe of 500 to 5,000 companies depending on market size. This is your competitor targeting TAM.
At 2 to 3 contacts per company, that is 1,000 to 15,000 total contacts. At standard cold email velocity, that is 3 to 12 months of runway before you need to refresh the list.
If your universe is under 500 companies, the market may be too niche for competitor targeting as a primary channel. Use it as a supplement.
The Outreach Angle
The outreach angle for competitor targeting is about differentiation, not trash talking. You are reaching people who already believe in the category. They do not need convincing that the problem is real. They need a reason to consider a different solution.
What Works
- Unique mechanism. What you do differently. Not "better." Differently. A different approach that produces a different outcome.
- Blind spot framing. Something the competitor does not do or does poorly that you handle. Frame it as a gap in the prospect's current approach, not an attack on the competitor.
- Proof from their world. Case studies with companies in the same market or facing the same challenges. Show results from businesses they recognize or relate to.
What Does Not Work
- Naming the competitor directly. Nobody likes a company that sells by bashing others.
- Generic "we are better" claims. Better at what? Says who? Prove it.
- Feature comparison lists. These trigger defensive reactions, not curiosity.
The best competitor targeting outreach never mentions the competitor at all. It just makes the prospect realize they are missing something they did not know they needed.
- Never name the competitor in your outreach. It makes you look small.
- Frame around what you do differently, not what they do poorly.
- Use case studies from their industry. Proof from their world is the most persuasive evidence.
Volume Expectations
Competitor targeting produces moderate volume with above average conversion. Plan for 300 to 800 qualified contacts per quarter depending on market size and number of competitors monitored.
Expected Performance
- Positive reply rate: 8% to 15%. Higher than standard cold outbound because the audience is already in market.
- Meeting booking rate: 2x to 3x standard cold campaigns.
- Sales cycle: Typically shorter because the prospect already understands the category. Less education required.
When Competitor Targeting Does Not Work
- Your competitors have no public presence (no case studies, no content, no reviews)
- You are in a category so new that competitors do not exist yet
- Your differentiation is unclear. If you cannot articulate what you do differently, neither can the prospect.
- The competitor's audience does not match your ICP (they serve a different segment)
Key Takeaways
- 1Competitor audiences are already in market. 2x to 3x meeting booking rate versus cold lists.
- 2You need at least 3 competitors with active social presence to build a meaningful operation.
- 3Build seed domain lists from case studies, review sites, and LinkedIn engagement. 20 to 50 domains minimum.
- 4Never mention the competitor in your outreach. Differentiate through unique mechanism, not comparison.
- 5Expect 300 to 800 qualified contacts per quarter with 8% to 15% positive reply rate.
Frequently Asked Questions
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