SWOT Analysis is useful for highlighting and positioning advantages.

Customers are highly influenced by analysts and thought leaders.

Market leaders establish a unique and defendable market position and then strive to "own" that position. When I begin to define a product (or company's) position, I begin by evaluating the size of potential areas of market opportunity, the customer problem to be solved and the current solution for it, the value provided by my product relative to the current solution, my strengths relative to the competition, and the partners needed to win.

One useful way of differentiating oneself from the competition is with strength, weakness, opportunity, and threat (SWOT) analysis as shown in the slide "Competitor X-SWOT Analysis".

Once positioning is established, it is important to encourage thought-leaders to publicly support that position. This can be done by obtaining favorable reviews from the press, analysts, blogs, and elsewhere. Industry analysts tend to be most important for technical audiences such as those in the information technology (IT) market. See the "Magic Quadrant" slide as an example. I've found that thought-leaders respond best to big ideas, new ways to solve existing problems, well articulated stories, and repetition.