Positioning = Target Customer + Your Differentiation

(This is the simplest way to understand it ^)

Let's break it down 👇🏻

I. POSITIONING

This is a strategy of choosing meaningful reference points in a target customer's mind to help explain the value of your product most clearly against the competitive alternatives.

II. TARGET CUSTOMER

This is whom you're positioning for, and consists of several sub-elements.

a. Use Case

While firmographics are important to a target segment, the MOST important aspect is the activities that people would need to be doing to utilize your product in their businesses.

In our methodology, we refer to this as a "use case."

Some people call it a job-to-be-done, but this can be confusing since some schools of thought refer to a JTBD as a desired outcome.

For us, a "use case" is the functional activities a worker in a B2B context would need to perform that would be better suited with your product.

b. Competitive Alternative

This is how a target segment currently performs the activities of the use case without your product in the picture.

It can either be other products in your specific product category, or it might be more of a manual process.

C. Problem

In order to be a potential candidate for your product, they must find their current methods deficient in some way or another.

If everything is great in their world, you will need to convince them via demand generation activities that there is a better world out there.

This is essentially PRE-positioning work, or "priming" that needs to be done in order to bring them into your market.

For some products, this is extremely easy to do... others require LOTS of education. You'll need to plan your marketing strategy accordingly.

III. DIFFERENTIATION

a. Product Category

Here is where you put the category that best fits your product.

You can either choose an existing category or seek to create a new category or subcategory.

b. Differentiation Summary

This is where the rubber meets the road.

You must show how you solve the use case in a meaningful different way.

Here is where you highlight differentiated product features, capabilities, and outcomes you can drive.

For example, if you say that your differentiation is you can drive more revenue than your competitors... you'll need to back this up with a strong "how" (i.e. showing exactly how the product delivers more revenue) in order to be believable.

The right combination of these elements can catapult companies into success... or drive them right into the ground.

Here's a few examples from companies like lemlist, DuckDuckGo, Tango, and Linear (along with the way they represented these positioning decisions on their homepages).

#productmarketing #saas #b2b