How do you know you have a "positioning" problem?

Here are 5 telltale signs 👇🏻

1 People read your website, but they don't understand what you do

This is by far the most common complaint we hear from venture-funded B2B software companies.

This could be because you've over-indexed on outcomes (and de-emphasized the "what" and the "how"). It could also be because you are speaking to a wide variety of audiences at once who have different use cases for your product.

Whatever the specific cause, the common thread is weak positioning. Getting positioning right makes it so your top-fit customers will immediately understand your value — with no confusion.

2. People get what you do, but not why they should pick you over the competition

This is a problem with differentiation.

We see this most commonly in two scenarios:

a) products existing in mature markets

b) products existing where there is no market

The first category is truly a positioning problem. There is nothing wrong with being in a competitive category... IF you can find a meaningful point of differentiation.

However, if you're in the SECOND bucket, it is likely more of a product strategy problem. This is a much more likely scenario for earlier stage companies that haven't found product market fit yet.

3. You're going after multiple segments and don't know who to prioritize

This is where the "choice" aspect of positioning comes into play.

The act of positioning requires CHOOSING who you are for. My co-founder Robert Kaminski 🎯 says the act of positioning IS pigeonholing... but in order to dominate a specific market.

Companies that refuse to prioritize will always struggle to position themselves effectively. Their resulting message will always feel watered down, vague, and uncompelling.

4. Different stakeholders explain your product in different ways

This speaks to the failure to position INTERNALLY.

Positioning is not only important for external marketing. It's extremely powerful for keeping your teams all chugging in the same direction.

If you haven't done the work to position yourself internally, your different teams will start pulling in opposing directions, which leads to huge inefficiencies.

5. You have multiple products and struggle to explain the suite in a simple way

This usually follows a large funding round, where a founder's eyes become bigger than their stomach.

Revenue potential surrounds them, and the urge to spend VC money on engineering becomes overwhelming.

But if you aren't careful to think how you can position multiple products together, you can end up with a jumbled, Frankenstein of a product that is impossible to explain.