In Obviously Awesome, positioning consultant and speaker April Dunford explains why positioning, an often misunderstood and undervalued part of the marketing process, is critical to successfully selling your product. She contends that without proper positioning—contextualizing the use of the product, so consumers understand why they should buy it—customers don’t understand how or why to use your product and subsequently won’t buy it.
When executed well, however, positioning gives customers context on what your product is for and how it will benefit them, thus incentivizing them to buy. To help you position any product well, Dunford provides a 12-step process that begins with establishing a positioning team within your company and ends with tracking and modifying your successful positioning over time. Alongside her positioning process, we’ll provide actionables on how to implement her recommendations and contrast her advice with that of other marketing professionals.
(Shortform note: In her book, Dunford presents only a 10-step positioning process. However, she includes a chapter after the tenth step, in which she describes how to implement your positioning and then track its success over time. In this guide, we’ve framed the final book chapter as two additional steps because they seem as important to the process as all previous steps.)
According to Dunford, positioning is providing the backdrop for the use of your product to your customer so they know what the product is, why it matters, and why they should buy it.
(Shortform note: In Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey Moore agrees with Dunford on the fundamental importance of positioning in business but veers from her definition of positioning. He asserts that positioning isn’t something you do as a company—how you contextualize your product—but rather describes how the customer contextualizes the product. Yet while Moore is more explicit than Dunford about positioning being “in the eye of the customer,” it’s clear that Dunford understands that the customer’s opinion of your product matters more than your opinion of your product. We’ll see this later in this guide.)
You must provide this contextualizing backdrop because humans use context to make sense of the world in general—it’s how the human brain operates, writes Dunford. Here’s an example: When you enter an unoccupied office and see a mahogany desk and law degrees on the wall, you use that context to glean you’re in a lawyer’s office. Similarly, if you enter an office with a treadmill desk and high-tech gadgets, you guess from those clues you’re in the office of a tech start-up leader.
(Shortform note: Dunford argues that the human brain naturally uses context to understand the world, and others have taken this idea even further, claiming that the brain can only operate through the use of contextual comparisons (for instance, understanding that a plant is a flower because it looks like other plants around it, which you know to be flowers). If the brain didn’t operate through the use of contextual comparisons, it wouldn’t be a brain—it would be some other type of system.)
Positioning isn’t merely helpful: It’s the bedrock of successful selling and marketing, contends Dunford. If you can’t position your product properly, no amount of money thrown at marketing and sales can sell it. This is because consumers can only appreciate and value a product when it’s set in the right context. For instance, if you try to sell a multitool as a kitchen accessory, people won’t see its value because you’re not setting it in a context that highlights its usefulness. But if you position a multitool as an accessory for a backpacking trip, consumers will see its value because the context makes clear how useful it is (it’s good for opening cans, cutting wood, and so on).
(Shortform note: Dunford argues that positioning is foundational to successful selling because humans can’t understand why they should buy a product if it’s not set in the right context. But positioning is also critical to selling for another reason: It lets you justify the cost of your product to consumers. If your product is more expensive than competitors for no apparent reason, consumers won’t buy it. However, if you position your product as a higher-quality or more exclusive product, consumers will understand why it costs more and will be more likely to buy.)
Dunford argues that because positioning is poorly understood and undervalued, marketers make three common mistakes when positioning, which you should avoid.
Mistake 1: Marketers think they don’t need to position products because their positioning is clear to them and seems as though it should be clear to anyone else. Alternatively, they position the product how they, as ideators, originally conceived the product—not how consumers, who have different needs and use cases, will perceive it. For instance, a marketer may think a new compact e-reader will be great for travelers, but for consumers, the e-reader makes the most sense as a tool for presentations.
(Shortform note: Marketers who succumb to this problem might benefit from developing greater empathy, the ability to see things from someone else’s perspective—in this case, the customer’s. You can give your marketing team the following exercise to build empathy: Ask them to think about the daily workplace experience of each of their colleagues and then write down what they think each colleague’s high and low points are, what bothers them, and what makes them happy. Then, have the team compare these notes to see if they’ve understood each other’s experience. Consider adapting this to be about the customer’s daily lived experience so employees improve their ability to empathize with the customer.)
Mistake 2: Even if the product changes in development, marketers can’t see the product as anything other than what they originally intended it to be, claims Dunford. Because they’re stuck on the original idea, they don’t reposition the product based on how it’s changed, and consumers consequently don’t understand it, or they think it’s a bad product. For instance, if a compact e-reader has become bigger throughout development, a marketer might still position it as a travel e-reader, even though it won’t make sense to customers in that capacity because it’s too large.
(Shortform note: It’s doubly important to reposition a product that’s changed over the course of development because developing new products can be costly, and you need to recoup the money you’ve spent on ideation, design, prototyping, engineering, and testing. Prototyping, for instance, can cost up to $10,000 per iteration, and engineering can come with a price tag of up to $40,000. If, after having spent all that money developing a product, you position it poorly, you’ll not only fail to make a profit—you might find yourself in the red.)
Mistake 3: Sometimes the market initially selected for a product changes, and marketers fail to adjust their positioning to ensure they continue appealing to consumers in that market. A market might change if consumers’ preferences change—the car market might change dramatically if consumers decide they only want electric cars, for instance.
(Shortform note: Marketers likely make this mistake because adapting to a new market—and being adaptable as a company in general—can be extremely difficult. One way to be more adaptable to market changes is by adopting agile project management, an approach frequently used by software companies. In agile project management, you complete projects over several steps during which you periodically test the software, ensure it’s still relevant, and adjust if it’s not.)
Now, let’s move on to Dunford’s 12 steps that will let you avoid the above mistakes and position or reposition your product for maximum success.
Dunford writes that the first step of this process is to reflect on what aspects of your product make your customers happiest and what aspects of your top customers make them appreciate your product so much. This clues you in on how to position your product for the customers who will most appreciate it.
(Shortform note: Dunford operates under the assumption that you already have a product for sale and customers who love it. This can seem like putting the cart before the horse: If you haven’t yet positioned your product correctly (or if you don’t even have a sellable product), you might not have raving fans. One way to navigate this step is to first position your product however seems right to you now and then gather data both on what customers like and dislike about it. Use that data to refine your positioning until you can identify a group of top customers and think about what they love about your product, as Dunford recommends.)
Dunford adds that when positioning for the first time, focus only on top customers because this will give you a clearer picture of why people buy from you than if you looked at all customers (who buy for too many different reasons to be helpful to you).
(Shortform note: Dunford doesn’t say how to identify your top customers. To do this, you need to understand all your customers well first and then decide which of them you can sell to most easily. Get to know your customers by examining their habits, aspirations, fears, and buying decisions. Then, decide which customers will be the easiest to target.)
Next, assemble a group of employees from across the company who will define your current and new positioning, advises Dunford. A positioning process works best when it’s a team effort because you learn how different departments feel your product should be positioned. Then, you can incorporate their input and get everyone on the same page moving forward.
(Shortform note: While soliciting the input of many departments is helpful in identifying your positioning, it’s important to structure such a cross-departmental meeting well to maximize effectiveness and keep the group on track. To do this, get the ideas of people attending the meeting in advance of the meeting, so you know what their position will be and can comment productively on it. And always prepare an agenda and share it with attendees.)
The main business strategizer should lead the group’s discussion, argues Dunford. This is because the top person must be behind this positioning effort for others to adopt it. In a startup, this person is the CEO or the founder. In a large company, this is the division or business unit leader. Dunford also feels it’s best to bring in an outside facilitator to lead team discussions to ensure everyone’s heard and to challenge beliefs and ideas everyone in the company takes for granted about the product.
(Shortform note: As a female leader and facilitator in the business world, Dunford likely had to overcome many of the obstacles women face in the workplace. If you’re a female leader who must rally a team behind a new product position, or if you’re an outside facilitator who needs to earn the respect of a group of strangers, consider Sheryl Sandberg’s advice in Lean In to overcome impostor syndrome: Remind yourself of your past successes to counter feelings of inadequacy in a leadership role.)
Once you have a group of people who will position your product, they must consciously set aside old conceptions of the product to have the openness to devise the best new positioning, contends Dunford. If the group is mired in old ways of thinking about the product, they’ll never be able to optimally position it. For instance, if the group is convinced your high-powered vacuum cleaner should only be used for garage floors, they might not even consider that it could also be used for indoor spaces and thus positioned as such.
To do this, first ensure members of the positioning team have a common understanding of what positioning is (if you employ an outside facilitator, they can establish clarity on this). Then, encourage the team to release their current ideas about the product’s positioning and be open to new positioning.
(Shortform note: Dunford doesn’t explain how to get people to have an open mind about positioning. You can encourage your team to think openly about your product by strengthening what psychologists call accommodation: the process of changing your existing conceptions and belief systems about the world (not working new ideas into an existing belief system—that’s called assimilation). One way to accommodate is to become aware of confirmation bias (the tendency to only pay attention to information that supports your existing beliefs) and actively counter it. So when your team pushes against a new positioning idea, ask them to evaluate if maybe this is because it contradicts their existing beliefs about the product.)
Now that you have an open-minded team, figure out together what your product’s real competition is—in other words, what alternative solutions your ideal customers would use if they didn’t have your product, writes Dunford. It’s important to consider what the customer sees as alternative solutions, rather than what you see as alternative solutions based on your research of your competition because the customer’s alternative options are the only ones that matter here.
To identify your product’s real competition, ask ideal customers what problem they want to use your product to solve, recommends Dunford. Let’s say you sell a vacuum, and your customers tell you they want to tackle the problem of household dirt. Now ask what other solutions they compare your product to: What would your ideal customers do if they didn’t use your product? For instance, some of your ideal customers purchase an expensive competitor vacuum, but most of your ideal customers simply use a duster instead of your product. Rank your answers to this from least common to most common, and focus more on the common alternatives—in this case, the duster.
Thinking About Your Customer’s Goal, Not Their Problem
In Blue Ocean Strategy, the authors propose a variation on Dunford’s approach to identifying the alternatives to using your products. They suggest you consider the goal the customer uses your product to attain (not the problem they’re using your product to solve). When you think in this way, you might see new alternatives to your product.
For instance, you view the problem your customer uses your product to solve as “the problem of a dirty home.” What if you reframe this question to inquire about the customer’s goal? You might see their goal as “achieve a clean living space” or even as “feel more comfortable in my home.”
So if your customer’s goal of using your vacuum is to feel more comfortable spending time in their home, they might achieve this not just by cleaning it but possibly by 1) repainting their walls, 2) buying new furniture, or 3) having guests over more often. You likely wouldn’t consider these as alternative solutions to the problem of a dirty house, but these alternative approaches to achieving a goal might lead you to consider viable alternatives to your product. For instance, some cleaning-averse customers might well buy new furniture to make their home nicer rather than spending the time and energy tidying it.
This being said, it will likely remain helpful to follow Dunford’s advice to rank the answers to the question about the customer’s goal from least to most common to eliminate unlikely alternatives. For example, few customers will likely consider having more guests over a viable alternative to cleaning the home.
Now that you know what alternative solutions your customers compare you to, identify what features make your product different and better than those alternatives, advises Dunford. Do this by listing all concrete unique features of your product. Approach your product from a few different perspectives to ensure you’re pinpointing all possible assets. For instance, your vacuum’s suction power makes it great for carpets, but its light weight also makes it great for vacuuming stairs. You might consider asking ideal customers why they chose you and what they feel sets you apart from others.
(Shortform note: Dunford again presses your team to consider several customer perspectives on your product rather than just your own. Tony Robbins’s advice on perspective-taking in relationships might help your team more easily adopt these viewpoints. Have your team ask themselves three questions: 1) What is the customer seeing in this product that I’m not seeing? 2) What past experiences have led the customer to feel this way about the product? 3) How can I use this information to better understand the customer? For instance, customers may have had past experiences with poorly performing vacuums, so you can use that information to list your superior suction power as a feature of your vacuum.)
When listing your product’s assets, stick to concrete, verifiable features rather than vague, unverifiable ones, like “user-friendly” or “increases productivity,” recommends Dunford. However, if an independent reviewer writes that your product does these vague things—that your product is more user-friendly than alternatives, for instance—that counts as a concrete and verifiable feature.
(Shortform note: If independent reviewers aren’t reviewing your product, you might boost your product’s visibility by encouraging customers to review your product first. You can do this by simply asking the customer outright to leave a review and then by incorporating review solicitation into your selling process, so it happens automatically. When customers review your product, you increase your chances of being found online—and ideally, being reviewed by an industry publication that can verify your product’s quality and assets.)
At this stage, you know what your product’s unique features are. Now, figure out how each feature adds value to your customer’s life, counsels Dunford. It’s easiest to break this step into two sub-steps: First, determine each feature’s benefit—what the feature will do practically for the customer. For instance, if your vacuum’s feature is a high-powered suction mechanism, the benefit is greater cleaning power.
(Shortform note: In Building a StoryBrand, Donald Miller proposes that your product should not only add benefit and value to your customer’s life but that it should also help them solve a philosophical problem—a misalignment between their lifestyle and their values. So, ideally, your vacuum would have the benefit of greater cleaning power, the value (as we’re about to see) of a clean home, and solve the philosophical problem of not having enough time to spend on things that matter to the customer due to menial chores.)
Next, determine what the value of the benefit is, advises Dunford: how the feature helps the customer solve their specific problem. In our vacuum’s case, the high-powered suction feature with the benefit of greater cleaning power leads to the value of a less dirty home—the problem the consumer is trying to solve.
(Shortform note: In the Little Red Book of Selling, Jeffrey Gitomer proposes you consider “value” in an additional light. Beyond the value your product provides directly, your company must also provide value to the customer through services like advice, email or social media communication, and ongoing support. If you don’t offer that sort of value yet, consider establishing avenues for this.)
Dunford adds that you need to translate your product’s feature to its benefit and value for the customer because it’s rarely clear to the customer how these things are connected. For example, you might need to explain how your vacuum’s faster-revolving brush (feature) separates carpet fibers better, allowing it to suck up deeper dirt (benefit), which keeps your carpets cleaner longer (value).
(Shortform note: Marketing experts like Dunford stress the importance of showing the customer exactly how your product improves their lives and not making them draw those connections themselves. In Building a StoryBrand, Donald Miller elaborates that many brands fail because they don’t tell customers how they help them stay alive or prosper—every human’s two main goals in life. When brands don’t clearly show how they help customers achieve those two basic goals, customers overlook them.)
Once you’ve determined the value of each feature, group these values together based on their relevance to the customer, states Dunford. Do this by thinking about what values the customer would associate with each other. For instance, your customer might consider that some values fall into the category of “ease of use” while other values fall into the category of “cleaning effectiveness.” Narrow this down to one to four value groups.
(Shortform note: Rather than just imagining what values your customer might associate with each other, consider asking them, as Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles suggest in Raving Fans. When doing this, ask people who’ve already purchased from you or who plan on doing so (you don’t have to only ask your top customers, as Dunford suggests). Blanchard and Bowles recommend inquiring about what customers appreciate about your product—this will help you understand what they value about your product. To figure out what values customers associate with each other, ask customers to then zoom out and describe what bigger-picture aspects of your product they like—this should provide you with value categories.)
Once you have a good understanding of the value that your product delivers versus other alternatives, determine which customer segments care most about that value, advises Dunford. You’ll want to target these segments simply because they’ll be easiest to sell to.
(Shortform note: This step, pinpointing the customer segments most likely to buy your product, may seem similar to Step 1, identifying your most eager customers. We might consider that Step 1 is a general and high-level reflection on what certain people like about your product that kicks off your positioning effort. Step 7, then, is a detailed inquiry into precisely who these groups are.)
To determine which customer segments to target, follow these steps, writes Dunford:
1. Think about what makes some groups more excited about your product than others. For instance, people most interested in your vacuum cleaner might be employees who work from home and care particularly about having a clean living space. (Shortform note: This step might require you to find out what makes other groups unexcited about your product, which can be painful. Whenever you receive criticism of your product, determine if that criticism is justified (and not simply a malicious attack) and then try being grateful you received it—this gives you the opportunity to improve your product.)
2. Consider how to identify these groups. You might identify them based on the brands they buy, the media they consume, or the jobs they hold. For example, you might identify your target group of work-from-home employees by the type of job they have: skilled knowledge roles. (Shortform note: Marketers often take this identification step even farther by creating customer personas—fictional characters with certain buying behaviors. While doing this isn’t necessarily helpful in the context of positioning, it can later help your marketing team craft content and messaging that better appeals to a persona based on how they buy and the advertising they pay attention to.)
3. Make this group as specific and narrow as possible at this stage and then expand later if necessary. Remember that your positioning will evolve over time, so you can change your target group if needed later. For now, you might target only work-from-home executives at tech start-ups and then later expand to include work-from-home executives at any company. (Shortform note: In New Sales. Simplified., Mike Weinberg agrees that you must narrow your target segment as much as possible and provides a specific reason for doing so: It allows you to fully understand a particular segment—work-from-home executives in this case—so you can better market to them and establish yourself as credible in their eyes.)
Now that you understand your competition, your superior features, and which customer segments to target, sell your product in a market that provides context on how to use it and that gives you the opportunity to dominate that market, recommends Dunford. As we’ve said, positioning means establishing the context for the use of your product, and selling your product in the right market helps provide that context. For instance, if you sell a new snack in the “chip” market, customers immediately know approximately what your product will look and taste like.
(Shortform note: Dunford doesn’t provide specific advice on how to select the market for your product that provides the right context on how to use it. In Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey Moore advises that you won’t initially have enough data to know which market—or what he refers to as a niche—to position your product in. You must therefore first position your product as well as possible through a thought exercise: Think of your target customer (who you identified in the previous step) and consider in what scenarios they’d buy your product. This is, in essence, the niche you should enter (for instance, “high-end convenience store snacks”).)
You can try to dominate three types of markets, claims Dunford:
1. An existing market: Customers already know this market well and understand what defines a good product within it. For instance, in the chip market, consumers know a chip should be salty and crunchy and expect this from all chips. Small businesses shouldn’t try to win over an entire existing market—to create a chip more popular than Pringles, for instance. However, a large company could try to win over an existing market if the market is changing in a way that favors its product (say if the chip market is becoming increasingly health-conscious, and your company sells a veggie chip), or if there’s no existing market leader.
(Shortform note: If you were to succeed in dominating an existing market in the way Dunford recommends, you might even go so far as to establish a monopoly in the market. Dunford doesn’t discuss this specific possibility, but in Zero to One, Peter Thiel argues that creating a monopoly would advance the greater good. This is because monopolies, facing no stiff competition that requires them to minimize expenses and maximize profit, can dedicate resources toward improving the lives of employees and society as a whole. If you aim to dominate an existing market, it might be worth asking yourself if you’d feel compelled to give back to society if you achieve your goal and perhaps changing your aim if the answer is no.)
2. A subsegment of an existing market: Alternatively, if you’re a smaller company, pick a subsegment—an industry, region, customer group, or other factor—of an existing market you can dominate. Winning over a subsegment is easier than winning an entire existing market, and you’ll likely grow more quickly within that subsegment because happy customers will spread the word about your business within their small subsegment community.
(Shortform note: You might appeal to a subsegment of an existing market by differentiating your product. According to Alan Lafley and Roger Martin, differentiating means producing a product that’s special in the eyes of the customer—has a higher quality or more exciting branding, for instance. Brands can charge more for differentiated products because customers value them more highly than competitor products. You might therefore target the “gourmet” subsegment of the existing chips market by positioning your product as being for epicures.)
To win over a subsegment of a market, you must identify a customer group within the broader market that has an unmet need—for instance, people with a potato allergy who still want to eat chips. You must then prove that your product is better for your market subsegment than the leading product on the market within that subsegment. In our example, you must prove that your veggie chip is better than the existing potato-substitute chip that dominates the market.
(Shortform note: In The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, Al Ries and Jack Trout contend that you must not only prove that you’re a better product than the market leader, but you must also communicate to customers that you understand you’re not the leading product on the market. They advise this specifically to businesses that aren’t at the top of their chosen markets (because customers only buy from you when your messaging aligns with what they understand about your brand), but their advice also applies to companies in a subsegment of a market. You might acknowledge your subsegment position to customers by saying something to the effect of: “We know we’re no Pringles, but we offer something healthier than Pringles…”)
3. A new market: Creating your own market is extremely difficult but also has the greatest potential for you to dominate, claims Dunford. This style is hard to pursue because you can’t use existing market references to help customers understand what your product is: You need to educate them from the ground up about your product.
Here’s an illustration of this: If you position your veggie chip in the “chips” market, consumers will instantly understand what you’re selling (a salty, fried vegetable snack) because they understand what a chip is. However, if you position your veggie chip in a new “alternative dehydrated superfood” market, customers won’t understand your product because they don’t grasp and will need to be taught what an “alternative dehydrated superfood” is.
However, while creating a new market is difficult, if you succeed, you’ll be the dominating company in a market that’s set up to support your unique strengths.
(Shortform note: Al Ries and Jack Trout agree with Dunford that being first in a market means potentially big success. They elaborate that if you’re first in a market, customers will remember and reach for your brand more than newcomer brands and will continue to choose you even if newcomers offer better products. Trout and Ries would likely further argue that if you’re going to create a new market, you should start educating your customers about it immediately and not waste time trying to perfect your product before setting up the market. They feel that being first in a market offers you so many advantages that the quality of your product is secondary in importance. This approach might make creating a new market easier than Dunford thinks.)
Now that you know what market to target, you might take advantage of a current trend to show that your product is relevant and useful to consumers now, proposes Dunford. While this step isn’t mandatory—and there are conditions under which it’s a bad idea to ride a trend—if you can clearly show customers how what you already do aligns with a current trend in your existing market, you can benefit from the trend.
Let’s illustrate this: It would be a bad idea for your veggie chip company to ride the trend of supersizing your products because your brand identity revolves around healthy portions, and supersizing products isn’t a trend in your existing market. By following this trend, your company would appear uncommitted to your core principles. However, if there’s a current trend of adding barbeque flavoring to products, you might avail yourself of that trend because 1) your existing products already have flavoring, so adding a new flavor would align with what you’re currently doing, and 2) other chip companies in your market are also BBQ-flavoring their chips.
(Shortform note: If riding a trend isn’t possible for you because it doesn’t align with what you’re doing or isn’t a trend in your market, consider making the use of your product a trend in its own right. You might do this by first targeting consumer groups that Geoffrey Moore refers to as innovators and early adopters: people who are extremely tech-savvy and willing to test new products (in this context, products are usually new technologies and software). Innovators and early adopters are the people who spread knowledge and enthusiasm about a product to the general population, thereby potentially launching a trend.)
Before latching on to a trend, ask yourself the following questions to determine if doing so is the right move for you: Does connecting my product to a trend reduce the clarity of my message? Am I only stressing the trend and ignoring the product and market? Is the connection between your product and the trend unclear? If you answer “yes” to any of the above questions, don’t avail yourself of the trend—it won’t help you.
(Shortform note: Dunford advises cautious self-examination when thinking about riding trends. Other experts are less wary of trends, arguing that a company’s ability to ride a trend contributes significantly to its profitability. However, they contend that it’s not enough to ride a trend: You must anticipate the trend to take full advantage of it. This requires you to actively search for trends, for instance in growing geographic markets. You might thus reframe the questions Dunford recommends you pose to be: “Where are markets growing? And how can I position my product in these growing markets?”)
Once you’ve positioned your product, communicate that position across the company through a positioning document so all departments can apply the positioning to what they do, recommends Dunford.
In the document, include the name and description of the product, its market or market segment, the alternatives to using your product, the product’s unique, superior features, the value it adds to the customer’s life, and the characteristics of the ideal customer.
(Shortform note: Establishing buy-in into your positioning will likely only happen if your employees already are aligned with your company culture. This is because a strong culture gives employees a company identity to rally behind, which makes it easier for them to then rally behind the company’s positioning. Further, a strong culture encourages employees to stay at the company because they feel a sense of belonging, and this, too, helps firm up positioning because new employees don’t constantly have to be educated on it.)
Once you’ve completed the above steps, implement your positioning, says Dunford. There are two parts to this: creating a narrative about your product (this is the pitch with which your salespeople will approach prospects) and building your messaging (contained in your marketing to customers). Let’s look at each.
Here’s how to construct the narrative about your product, according to Dunford: First, articulate the problem your product helps the customer solve (“It takes you forever to vacuum your entire office”). Then, explain how other solutions fail to solve that problem (“Most vacuums require frequent emptying and cleaning, which slows you down”). Next, tell the customer what the perfect solution to the problem would be, and then introduce your product by explaining what market it’s in (“You need a vacuum with immense cleaning power, which is why you need the DustDestroyer, the top vacuum for workplaces”). Finally, explain the value the product adds to the customer’s life (“The DustDestroyer lets you clean faster and more efficiently than other vacuums, saving you time”).
Next, have your marketing team adjust the messaging based on the new positioning. Dunford doesn’t elaborate on how to message because there are other resources to help you do that, but she does recommend creating a messaging document containing the main message, which your team can adjust for each piece of marketing material.
Alternative Marketing Narratives
In Building a StoryBrand, Donald Miller presents an alternative marketing narration that helps sell your product to customers:
Instead of beginning the story with the problem your product solves, Miller begins the story with the customer’s desire: the state or objective they wish to attain. Next, he advises explaining the customer’s problem, elaborating that the problem can be external (tangible), internal (an unpleasant emotional state), or philosophical (misalignment of the customer’s lifestyle with their values).
The narrations continue to diverge in an important way: Dunford’s narration includes an articulation of the value the product adds while Miller’s narration contains a call to action—the ask for the customer to buy. We might imagine Dunford is aware of the foundational importance of the call to action in selling and doesn’t include it in her narrative because it’s not as integral to positioning as communicating the problem to customers and showing them how your product helps solve it. A call to action is more important in messaging to customers because this is where you truly sell the product.
This means that when it comes to messaging—which Dunford doesn’t elaborate on—you might consider adding a “call to action” field to your messaging document. This will ensure you actually ask the customer for the sale.
According to Dunford, the final piece of the positioning puzzle is to track the success of your positioning over time and make adjustments if needed. Assess your positioning every six months to learn if the market has changed and if you need to thus reposition your product. Possible changes to the market include established competitors entering it, changing government regulations, the introduction of new technology, changing customer desire, and the economic environment.
(Shortform note: How can you stay abreast of changes in your market to ensure your product remains optimally positioned? You might conduct simple research online or keep track of what your competitors are doing. You could also use social media, including LinkedIn, to gauge what’s happening in the market and how customers are feeling. Finally, it may be worth soliciting the input of advisors and going to industry conferences to obtain the insights of leaders to gain a long-term perspective of where your market is headed.)
Identify the features, benefits, and value that both you and your customers perceive in your product, and consider how these might differ.
List what you personally feel are your product’s five best features. Then, determine what benefit (the practical support) and value (the problem-solving ability) each provides the customer. Write these down next to the feature.
Now, note three customer segments that would be interested in your product. Be sure these are narrow segments (for instance, “work-from-home parents” is a narrow segment, while “parents” is too broad).
Put yourself in the shoes of each of these three customer segments, and ask yourself what they would consider to be your product’s best features and those features’ benefits and value. What would they appreciate in your product given their circumstances and needs?
Finally, consider if the features, benefits, and value you see in your product differ from those your customer sees. How might you position your product differently to reflect your customers’ perspectives?