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

Every single marketing and sales tactic that we use in business today uses positioning as an input and a foundation. Nothing works without positioning as a starting point.

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

The market is crowded with multiple products competing for people's attention. Positioning is how you break through the noise, take into account your own strengths and weaknesses, and contrast them against the competitive to put you in a unique leadership position in the minds of your customers.

A lack of clear positioning leads to:

When people encounter a product they have never seen before, they will look for clues to help them figure out what it is, who it's for, and why they should care about it.

Trap #1 - You're stuck on the idea of what you originally intended to build and you fail to realize that your product has become something else.

When you put your product into the hands of customers, it can take a life of its own, and over time it can evolve into something different than you originally intended. Many businesses fail to realize this and continue positioning it in the incorrect way.

For example, cake and muffins are essentially the same thing, but positioning your product as such can have a dramatic difference on your business. 👇

Trap #2 - Your product hasn't changed, but the market surrounding your product has changed. What once worked in terms of positioning is no longer effective given the change in what the market is looking for.

Ex. Today your bakery is killing it selling "diet muffins" to office workers. But tomorrow, people may think less about "dieting" and more about heathy living, bodybuilding, etc. so the bakery across the street selling "gluten free paleo snacks" steals all your business.

Make a short list of your best customers. They represent the perfect type of customer you want to buy from you — your best-fit customer.

Is your best-fit customer more likely to have certain characteristics? Big vs small, a certain Industry, business model type, etc?

What are the reasons these customers were so happy with our offering, while others were not? What was it about these customers that made them such a good fit for us?

Think of your product as a fishing net. You have a theory that it's good for catching grouper, but you haven't tested it yet. Start by going to a place with lots of different fish and see what you pull up. Then, based on what you start pulling up, move to a place with lots of those types of fish.

Look for things that work, then decipher why. What campaigns brought in the most leads? What content is consumed the most? What events/webinars had the most attendees? Asking these questions helps lead you to the happiest customers.

A positioning process works best as a team effort including different functions:

Positioning impacts every group in your org, with outputs like:

If you've managed to get senior leadership together for a day, don't waste it arguing over what positioning actually is. Everyone needs to be on the same page regarding:

You need to let go of your positioning baggage.

The foundational component of positioning is the problem your customers are trying to solve, and how they perceive your offering in comparison to other ways of solving it.

When April asked customers what they would use if her database product didn't exist, none of them named another database. Instead, they suggested business intelligence tools or data warehouses.

We typically think that our main competitors are other products like ours. But most customers are not nearly as knowledgeable of our market, so without our product they would do things manually, with a spreadsheet, or not do it at all.

In this step, focus on features and capabilities, rather than value. List all of the attributes your product has that your competitors don't. Can include:

What may seem like a negative could actually be positive. Ex. A software company is the only vendor on the market who requires a services team to install on-site. To some this could be a negative, but others see customization and high-touch service.

Don't list things that are subjective to feelings, like "we have the best service." Stick to things that are factual that you can prove. What about your company makes it have the best service?

Customers care about what your features can do for them.

Features unlock benefits that can be translated into customer value

In your list you should see themes start to emerge. The goal of this step is to see patterns and shorten your list in to 1-4 value clusters. Look for the most critical things that bring our unique value to the front and center.

Ex. you could see "works on any mobile device" or "works without an internet connection." Those attributes might provide value to customers who want to use your solution with work in the field in remote locations. Lump those attributes into "supports remote environments"

Look at which customers really care a lot about the value you offer. This is also called Segmentation.

Segmentation is more than just demographics and technographics. You need to look for characteristics about a person or company that makes them really care about what you do.

In general, a segment needs to meet at least two criteria to be worthy of focus

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

Deliberately choose a market frame of reference that makes your value obvious to the people who care about it the most:

There are 3 different approach to isolating, targeting, and winning a market:

1. Head to Head: Positioning to win an existing market

Customers are well aware of what solutions can and can't do. They compare alternatives using a set of features where you come out on top. You are claiming to be better for most, if not everybody.

Choose H2H when the status quo suits you and you want to continue to define it that way.

Head to head is rarely a good choice when launching a new product, especially if you're bootstrapping, but one situation when it can work is when a clear winner has not yet been established in a category. (Ex. Smart Glasses)

2. Big Fish, Small Pond: Positioning to win a subsegment of an existing market

You can subsegment by a number of things, like industry, geography, company size, etc.

You are taking advantage of what buyers already know about the broader category, but calling out the fact that there are important needs that are not being met by the category leader.

May need to convince people that many of your features are good enough, compared to the broader category leader.

For sub-segmenting to work, it needs to represent a large enough market opportunity, allowing you to meet your revenue goals.

Moving to focus on a subsegment may worry some people, but consider that you are deliberately choosing not to waste your focus on a part of the market that was never going to buy from you anyway and instead, focusing on where you have a distinct advantage. And just because your initial target market is narrow, doesn't mean it needs to stay that way.

When to use this approach:

3. Create a New Game: Positioning to Win a Market You Create

You aren't just capturing demand, you have to create it first.

Creating a category is so hard, that you should only do it after evaluating every possible market category and determining that you can't position your product there, because doing so would fail to put focus on your differentiators and value.

This style of positioning involves the most "teaching" because you aren't leveraging what people already know about an existing category. Customers needs to first understand why this category deserves to exist, why is the problem unique, why do existing products in other categories fall short? You also need to teach them how to evaluate products in this category and why you're the best vendor to deliver on that solution.

Trends help you explain why your offering is important right now.

You are looking for where your product, the market category, and a compelling trend overlap.

Positioning needs to have company buy-in so it can be used to inform branding, marketing campaigns, sales strategy, product decisions, and customer success strategy.

April uses the positioning canvas below, to provide a concise version of positioning that can fit on one page.

Translate Your Positioning Into a Sales Story

This is the pitch your sales team would give on a first call with a customer. It generally follows a common story arc:

Messaging

Translate your sales story into messaging that can be used in marketing and sales material, for campaigns, and on your website.

Have a single source of truth (messaging document) will give everyone a starting point when creating any marketing material. Without it, every piece of marketing will build off the last and you risk moving away from your core messaging.

Product Roadmap and Pricing

Changing the way that a company thinks about itself will usually have an impact on how features get prioritized.

There are also price expectations in each category, so you may need to consider changing your price to better fit what's expected in your category. (ex. investment banks expect a CRM for them to be more expensive than the one-size-fits-all CRM)

Tracking Your Positioning Over Time

Check in on positioning every six month or when there's been a major event that could change the competitive landscape or the way customers perceive and evaluate solutions.

Major events could include: