Business Challenge Summary

A Global Fortune 500 energy and technology company is facing massive industry disruption due to the rapidly changing AI boom that is both changing their business and reshaping their product offers and strategic focus. Their global CMO was concerned they might be assuming they were winning simply because they are a massive, established industry authority and they have a formidable competitor making considerable “noise” in the industry (through PR, product launches, events, etc). He needed a clear perspective to understand the landscape and a roadmap on where to focus resources.

In a category (and a digital landscape) being redefined by AI, fast-moving competitors can gain ground quickly. Leadership wanted an unbiased third-party view of the full competitive landscape to pressure-test assumptions and answer questions like:

• Where do we truly stand vs. the fast moving competitors shaping this category right now? (their existing benchmarks were largely internal)
• What does “good” look like today in a world where performance is changing quickly across SEO, AI search, paid, and fragmented channels?
• Who is building real category authority (not just brand awareness), and how?
• What should we track quarterly so we can see shifts early and act decisively?
• What content should we be creating that will be found via online search and resonate with our target decision makers?

They wanted a credible baseline and an executive-ready view of the landscape—both globally and by country — that is clear enough to guide decisions, and structured enough to refresh quarterly.

&Marketing’s Approach

We designed a foundational competitive benchmarking SEO and AI Search model that translated a complex digital landscape into a consistent, trackable view of category performance and positioning.

Across five priority markets and a defined competitor set, we built an apples-to-apples baseline spanning:

• Category visibility: whether the brand shows up when buyers research the topic
• Messaging and positioning: how competitors define the category, what claims they lead with, and which proof points they use (partnerships, innovation narratives, outcomes)
• Content footprint: who is educating the market vs. only describing products, and the impact
• Paid presence: whether anyone is actively capturing high-intent demand with category-specific messaging
• Regional consistency: how the competitive landscape changes across regional markets

We packaged this into a report their executive team could make near real time decisions that included:

1. a benchmark framework built for quarterly updates
2. a clear narrative: what the market is rewarding, which competitor is shaping perception, and where the client is exposed or advantaged—across SEO + AI search visibility dynamics.
3. a roadmap of recommendations by priority, including a content calendar, messaging inputs by decision maker, and technical / website updates to simplify the user journey.

Results

This benchmark replaced internal assumptions with measurable, decision-ready data that surfaced several high-impact realities leadership could act on.

• A smaller competitor was consistently outranking the client on core, non-branded category online searches. In our tracked set, that competitor held the #1 position for 3 of the 4 highest-volume category terms, and top-three placements on the majority of the category terms we monitored, meaning they were becoming the default discovery brand.
• The client’s brand was most present in searches closest to purchase, but not leading at the moments that shape preference (earlier in the funnel). The client ranked on most of the tracked category terms, but frequently outside the top 5, where visibility and click-through fall off sharply and buyer impressions get set by whichever brand appears first.
• The benchmark revealed real leverage the client can capitalize on quickly. The client already has strong proof points (capabilities, innovation story, ecosystem credibility); the issue was making those proof points discoverable and cohesive within the buyer journey.
• Category-specific paid competition was essentially absent. Across the competitive set, estimated category-specific paid activity was minimal, even though several category terms carry $5+ cost-per-click—a rare indicator of high-intent demand with minimal bidding pressure.
• Leadership gained a way to measure visibility quarterly. The team left with a repeatable scoreboard tied to category visibility, message consistency, and competitive momentum—so they can spot fast movers early and respond before gaps widen.

The impact: This client gained category-specific clarity on where they’re winning, where they might be exposed, and where to aim both their strategy and tactics to own this growth segment in an increasingly AI-altered landscape. They are currently in the process of implementing our roadmap of content, website, and localization recommendations, the results of which we will continue to track in future projects.

Want to know if a focused competitor is passing you by in the category you’re betting on next?

&Marketing’s competitive benchmarking approach gives you an executive-ready baseline, a repeatable quarterly scoreboard, and a clear roadmap for building category authority in a world where SEO and AI search are rewriting the rules.