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.

Want to do better account-based marketing? Get a better understanding of how to identify your best target accounts. Want to create better marketing content? Understand your value and differentiators better. Want to grow revenue faster? Understand what makes a best-fit customer. Positioning is a fundamental input into every tactic we execute, every campaign we launch, every piece of content we create, every sales pitch we make.

If we fail at positioning, we fail at marketing and sales. If we fail at marketing and sales,...

Positioning is a secret superpower that, when harnessed correctly, can change the way the world thinks about a problem, a technology or even an entire market.

Weak positioning leaves a trail—the signs are there if you know where to look. Your current customers love you, but new prospects can’t figure out what you’re selling.

Do customers complain that your prices are too high? You can’t charge a premium for a product that seems exactly like everything else on the market, and weakly positioned products are seen to offer little beyond their competitors. Clear positioning helps prospects understand that you are a leader in your market segment and that you offer considerable value, making it easier for you to charge a premium.

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.

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.

We generally fail to consider other—potentially better—ways to position our products because we simply aren’t positioning them deliberately.

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.

The worst part of a positioning statement exercise is that it assumes you know the answers.

You may worry a lot about an up-and-coming startup in your space, but your customers have likely never heard of them. In business software, the most common competitive alternative is a combination of general-purpose business software (spreadsheets, documents, presentations) and manual processes.