Concept 5 of 5

Positioning and messaging

1 question test this

Positioning is an internal document. Foundations is explicit about this, and it is the part people most often skip. The document says what market problems the product solves, for which personas, against which alternatives, and with what evidence. Everything the market sees, web copy, decks, campaigns, sales conversations, is derived from it.

Written from problems, not features

The discipline is the same one that produced the market problems table. Each positioning claim starts from a problem that has been validated as urgent and pervasive, and states how the product removes it. The feature is the reason the claim is credible, not the claim itself.

The test is whether a reader outside the company could tell what changes for them without knowing what the product does mechanically. A page that lists capabilities passes the internal review and fails that test.

Against which alternatives

Positioning only exists relative to something. The alternatives include competitors, the internal build, the incumbent tool and doing nothing, which is the most common winner. Win and loss interviews supply the real list, which routinely differs from the one the company assumes.

Naming the alternative also sets the category the buyer places you in, and the category sets the criteria they will judge you on. This is the most consequential and least deliberate choice most products make.

From positioning to messages

Once the internal document exists, messages are written per persona. Same product, same underlying claims, different emphasis and different evidence.

The economic buyer wants the business consequence and proof it is real. The technical evaluator wants to know how it works and what it will cost to run. The end user wants to know what changes on Monday morning. A message that tries to carry all three arrives as a paragraph nobody finishes.

Keeping it honest

Positioning drifts, usually toward whatever the product team most recently built. Two checks hold it in place. Every claim should trace to a validated market problem, and every claim should be one a customer would recognise as describing their own situation. Claims that survive only inside the building are the ones that make a sales team quietly stop using the deck.

Common misconceptions

Positioning is the tagline.

Positioning is an internal document that says which market problems the product solves, for whom, and against which alternatives. The tagline is one of many external artefacts derived from it, and writing the tagline first produces a company that cannot explain itself twice the same way.

A feature list is positioning if the features are good enough.

A feature list requires the reader to work out what it would do for them. Positioning does that work in advance, which is why it is written in terms of the problem rather than the mechanism.

One message serves every audience.

The framework specifies messages focused on each key buyer or persona, because the economic buyer and the end user judge on different criteria. A single message tuned to please both usually reaches neither.

1 question test this concept

A marketing lead says positioning is finished because the new tagline has been signed off. How should this be corrected, in the framework's terms?

  • AIt is correct, since the tagline is the public expression of positioning.
  • BPositioning is owned by product management, so marketing should not be involved.
  • CPositioning is an internal document describing the product by its ability to solve market problems, used to develop external messages focused on each key buyer or persona. The tagline is one artefact derived from it.
  • DPositioning is complete once the competitive comparison chart is published.
Check whether it stuck.

One per page, with a worked explanation.

Start the set
Related material
Book
Obviously Awesome, On positioning as context setting rather than persuasion.
Book
Sales Pitch, On turning positioning into a narrative a salesperson can deliver.
Book
Loved, On product marketing as an ongoing discipline.
Book
Crossing the Chasm, On positioning against the alternative the buyer actually considered.