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

by April Dunford

Context enables people to figure out what’s important. Positioning products is a lot like context setting in the opening of a movie.

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.

Context can completely transform the way we think...

Joshua Bell was sabotaged by his context.

Even a world-class product, poorly positioned, can fail.

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

Product creators often fall into the trap of thinking there is only one way to position an offering, and that we have no ability to shift that contextual frame of reference, especially after we have released it to market.

But most products can be positioned in multiple different markets.

Your dessert might be better positioned as a snack, and your email solution might make more sense if it were positioned as chat. But because we never thought about positioning our product deliberately, we continue to believe there is only one way to think about it.

we trap ourselves within our ...

Once our product is released into the market, we often fall into the trap of thinking that there is a “default” context around our offering.

You carefully designed your product for a market, but that market has changed.

Markets are made up of competitors who are constantly evolving their offerings, often in response to shifts in technology, customer preferences, economic conditions and regulatory requirements.

not deliberately positioning the product.

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.

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.

“You cannot be everything to everyone. If you decide to go north, you cannot go ...

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.”

Then we asked ourselves who cares a lot about getting answers quickly from a large amount of data.

Your best-fit customers hold the key to understanding what your product is.

We increased our growth by concentrating on our best-fit customers.

The first step in the positioning exercise is to make a short list of your best customers.