More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
It is not your intent to deride the performance of the established Old Guard.
Rather, it is to suggest that a new wave is coming, and that you intend to domesticate that technology to the same ends as these tried-and-true solution providers.
market alternatives call out the budget and thus the market category, and product alternatives call out the differentiation.
Positioning, first and foremost, is a noun, not a verb.
it is best understood as an attribute associated with a company or a product,
Positioning is the single largest influence on the buying decision.
serves as a kind of buyers’ shorthand, shaping not only their final choice but even the way they evaluate alternatives leading up to that choice.
Positioning exists in people’s heads, not in your words.
you must frame a position in words that are likely to actually exist in other people’s heads,
People are highly conservative about entertaining changes in positioning.
people do not like you messing with the stuff that is inside their heads.
most effective positioning strategies are the ones that demand the le...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
positioning as a verb—a set of activities designed to bring about positioning as a noun.
the correct goal is to make them easier to buy.
By focusing on making a product easy to buy, you are focusing on what the customers really want.
The goal of positioning, therefore, is to create a space inside the target customer’s head called “best buy for this type of situation” and to attain sole, undisputed occupancy of that space.
Name it and frame it. Potential customers cannot buy what they cannot name, nor can they seek out the product unless they know what category to look under.
to make the product easy to buy for a technology enthusiast.
The goal here is to create a technically accurate description of the disruptive innovation that puts it into its ontologically correct category with a descriptive modifier that sets...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
a genetic test that isolates and analyzes fetal cells extracted from a mother’s blood sample
Technically accurate description
to detect Down syndrome.
Category placement. Blood test to detect down syndrome
moved out of the routing and switching equipment to run on a server instead,
Differentiating statement that separates it from other network software
for the experts in the field, they are definitive. That’s what you need to communicate with technology enthusiasts.
Customers will not buy something until they know who is going to use it and for what purpose.
This is the minimum extension to positioning needed to make the product easy to buy for the visionary.
What disruptive change can it enable in their environment that they can leverage for dramatic competitive advantage?
For expectant mothers, their doctors, and their health-care insurers,
Who it's for
a pregnancy screening test that is less painful, safer, and cheaper than amniocentesis,
What it's for
The key idea here is to focus on the So what? and the Who cares? part of the value proposition.
Customers cannot know what to expect or what to pay for a product until they can place it in some sort of comparative context.
This is the minimum extension to positioning needed to make a product easy to buy for a pragmatist.
The more general case, and the one more familiar to marketing agencies with whom an entrepreneur might be working, is for more established markets.
There the goal is to position offerings relative to their adoption status.
the design leader,
price/performance leaders,
BlackBerry phones are a f...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Windows 8 phones a la...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Each of these is a descriptor for the customer in a market to place the product relative to the existing market
These sorts of distinctions help a generalist sign off on technology purchase decisions by creating points of reference with “adopters like me.”
The claim.
fundamental position statement—a claim of undisputable market leadership within a given target market segment—
The evidence.
The key here is to present sufficient evidence as to make any such disputation unreasonable.
Communications.
the goal here is to identify and address the right audiences in the right sequence with the right versions of the message.
Feedback and adjustment.
Establishing relationships of trust, therefore, rather than wowing them on a one-time basis, is key to any ongoing success.
Of the four components, by far the hardest to get right is the claim.
If you cannot pass the test, they don’t invest.
Whatever your claim is, it cannot be transmitted by word of mouth.
Imagine that someone other than you, your customer specifically, has to communicate to friends and associates your product. What do they say in one sentence?
Your marketing communications will be all over the map.
