Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It

by April Dunford

Positioning is the act of deliberately defining how you are the best at something that a defined market cares a lot about.

If we fail at positioning, we fail at marketing and sales. If we fail at marketing and sales, the entire business fails.

Great positioning supercharges all of your marketing and sales efforts.

Show them your product and explain what it does. Now ask them how they would describe what you do.

When customers encounter a product they have never seen before, they will look for contextual clues to help them figure out what it is, who it’s for and why they should care. Taken together, the messaging, pricing, features, branding, partners and customers create context and set the scene for the product.

Most products are exceptional only when we understand them within their best frame of reference.

While we understand that context is important, we generally fail to deliberately choose a context because we believe that the context for our product is obvious.

Trap 1: You are stuck on the idea of what you intended to build, and you don’t realize that your product has become something else.

Great positioning takes into account all of the following: The customer’s point of view on the problem you solve and the alternative ways of solving that problem. The ways you are uniquely different from those alternatives and why that’s meaningful for customers. The characteristics of a potential customer that really values what you can uniquely deliver. The best market context for your product that makes your unique value obvious to those customers who are best suited to your product.

These are the Five (Plus One) Components of Effective Positioning: Competitive alternatives. What customers would do if your solution didn’t exist. Unique attributes. The features and capabilities that you have and the alternatives lack. Value (and proof). The benefit that those features enable for customers. Target market characteristics. The characteristics of a group of buyers that lead them to really care a lot about the value you deliver. Market category. The market you describe yourself as being part of, to help customers understand your value. (Bonus) Relevant trends. Trends that your target customers understand and/or are interested in that can help make your product more relevant right now.

Alternatives to your product can be “hire an intern to do it,” “use a spreadsheet” or even “suffer along with the problem and do nothing.”

Your target market is the customers who buy quickly, rarely ask for discounts and tell their friends about your offerings.

Suppose your company was running out of cash and if the team didn’t close a certain amount of business by the end of the month, very bad things were going to happen. What types of customers would you focus on and why? What are the characteristics of those customers that make them more likely to buy?

it’s better to be successful and boring, rather than fashionable and bewildering.