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

by April Dunford

Could you hit your targets by focusing on only your best-fit customers? If the answer is no, you need to broaden your definition of “best-fit.” If the answer is yes, keeping your positioning focused on that segment is the most efficient use of your sales resources and the fastest and easiest path to hitting your sales targets.

Who cares and why?

A segment can be defined by narrowing the set of buyers you are targeting. For example, you might focus the category of “accounting software” to “accounting software for freelancers or lawyers.” You might narrow down “sporting goods” to “sporting goods for babies” or “for dogs” or “for octogenarians.” In general, the segment needs to meet at least two criteria to be worthy of focus: (1) it needs to be big enough that it’s possible to meet the goals of your business, and (2) it needs to have important, specific, unmet needs that are common to the segment.

You now have a good handle on your ideal prospects, your product’s unique attributes and the value those attributes can deliver. The next step is to pick a market frame of reference that makes your value obvious to the segments who care the most about that value.

We position our offering in a market to trigger a set of assumptions—about competitors, features and pricing—that work to our advantage.

Use abductive reasoning. The adage “if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck” also applies to new products. With abductive reasoning, you choose a market category by isolating your key features and their value, and asking yourself, What types of products typically have those features? What category of products typically deliver that value?

Examine adjacent (growing) markets. Another place to look for options is in the markets adjacent to the one in which you have been positioning yourself. Frequently, there are overlaps or blurry lines between markets.

Ask your customers (but be cautious).

Customers aren’t positioning experts, nor are they experts in how a market category works. Frequently they will attempt to position you in the most obvious market possible, and this market is often not the best one for highlighting your strengths.

Picking a market is like giving customers an answer to the question, What are you?

Head to Head: Positioning to win an existing market You are aiming to be the leader in a market category that already exists in the minds of customers. If there is an established leader, your goal is to beat them at their own game by convincing customers that you are the best at delivering the solution.

Big Fish, Small Pond: Positioning to win a subsegment of an existing market You are aiming to dominate a piece of an existing market category. Your goal is not to take on the overall market leaders directly, but to win in a well-defined segment of the market. You do this by targeting buyers in a subsegment of the broader market who have different requirements that are not being met by the current overall market leader.

Create a New Game: Positioning to win a market you create You are aiming to create a new market category. Your goals are first to prove to customers that a new market category deserves to exist, then to define the parameters of that market in the minds of ...

“If you don’t like being a doormat, then get off the floor.” Anonymous

You aren’t trying to change the game; you are winning—or attempting to win—at the game the way it is currently played.

If you are launching a new product, particularly if you are a small business just starting out, the Head to Head style is rarely a good choice. Trying to beat an established market leader at their own game is a bit like trying to out-cola Coke. It would be foolish for a small company to ever try.

If you are fighting to unseat a leader in an existing category using the currently established criteria, you’re in a battle to prove that you can beat the leader at their own game. You have to clearly demonstrate to the market that you have a superior ability to deliver, and you need to support that claim with hard evidence and undeniable facts.

Many startups compete in established market categories and do so successfully by first breaking up the market into smaller pieces and focusing on one piece they can win.

The goal of the Big Fish, Small Pond style of positioning is to carve off a piece of the market where the rules are a little bit different—just enough to give your product an edge over the category leader.

You get the advantage of a well-defined category without the stiff competition.

Dominating a small piece of the market is generally much easier than attempting to directly take on a larger leader.

Word-of-mouth marketing happens most naturally in tight market subsegments.