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

by April Dunford

A positioning exercise that is not a team effort driven by the business leader will fail.

marketing can’t “own” positioning, in the same way marketing can’t “own” the overall business strategy. It’s simply too broad and too important to live in one silo of the overall company.

The reality is that most products can be many things to many types of buyers.

Thoughts about the evolution of a product, from its conception to launch, are often baked into the initial positioning. Customers don’t have the same baggage—they know nothing about the history of the product when they first encounter it.

Market confusion starts with our disconnect between understanding the product as product creators, and understanding the product as customers first perceive it.

Customers don’t always see competitors the same way we do, and their opinion is the only one that matters for positioning.

Customers, although well-versed in their problems, are often terrible at describing them in a way that gives product creators enough nuance to make decisions.

Many companies have weak positioning precisely because they don’t clearly understand their true competitive alternatives in the minds of customers.

Features enable benefits, which can be translated into value in unique customer terms.

In positioning a product, we’re taking the most critical things that make us special and worth considering, and bringing the resulting unique value to the front and center.

Keep in mind that your product positioning will constantly be evolving. There is no need to make sure that your positioning will fit perfectly with where you or your product will be in ten years or five years or even two years from now. Similarly, your target customers will also evolve over time. Great positioning resonates with your best-fit customers right now, and will evolve with them over time.

Pay particular attention to adjacent markets that are growing quickly. Positioning yourself in a growing market has obvious benefits: a rising tide of customer interest, media focus and buzz, and the appearance of being new and cool—who doesn’t want that?

But be careful—simply wanting to belong in a market doesn’t make it the right one for you. Only choose a market if it makes your strengths obvious.

If you are already the market leader, you need to continually reinforce to your buyers that the current way of thinking about the market is the best one. This work includes reinforcing the current buying criteria and reiterating why you are the best to deliver those things.

The good news: if you position yourself in an existing market, you don’t have to teach buyers too much about the category itself and you can rely on what they already know. The bad news: if you rely on what buyers already know, you need to fit within their existing definition if you want to win.

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.

Just because your initial target market is narrow doesn’t mean you will stay narrowly focused forever.

Trends can only be used when they have a clear link to your product. Start by making the connection between your product and the market obvious.

If you find that you don’t have a way to pull trends into your positioning, there’s no need to panic. Many companies operate perfectly fine in markets that don’t have much sizzle and pizzazz.

If there’s a way to pull in trends, you should do it, but if there isn’t, it’s possible to have a very successful business without being trendy in the slightest.