A Quickstart Guide to Positioning⁠↗

‍”Positioning defines how your product is a leader at delivering something that a well-defined set of customers cares a lot about.”

Good positioning sets off a set of assumptions about my product that are true. Bad positioning sets off a set of assumptions about my product that aren’t true - leaving your sales and marketing teams to do the work of undoing the damage your positioning has already done.

We start with Competitive Alternatives, or what would customers do if our solution didn’t exist. Once we have that, we can ask ourselves, “What do we have that the alternatives do not?” That gives us a list of Differentiated features or Key Unique Attributes. We can then go down that list and ask ourselves, “So what for customers?” Put another way, what is the Value those capabilities enable for our buyers? Once we understand what our differentiated value is, then we can move to customer segmentation, or who are the Customers that Care a lot about our value. There is likely a wide range of buyers that care about that value, but certain customers care a lot more than others. What are the characteristics of a customer that makes them care a lot about your differentiated value? That gives us an idea of who our best-fit customers are. Lastly, we move to Market Category. Our best market category is the context we position our product in such that our value is obvious to our target customers. Put another way, it is the definition of the Market we Intend to Win.

A better way to think about competitive alternatives is to ask yourself, “What would a customer do if your offering didn’t exist?” Sometimes the answer to that question is “Do nothing.”

Unfortunately, history teaches us that companies that create market categories often lose in the long run to companies that gained a market foothold after the hard work of creating the category was already done. This is why we use Google and not Ask Jeeves. This is why we use Facebook and not Myspace. In fact, 90% of tech companies that have gone public over the past five years have been positioned in existing markets rather than creating new ones.