The MKT1 Guide to positioning

How to differentiate your product, without getting stuck in the weeds

Jun 12, 2024

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We’ve all seen “positioning” docs that are 10 pages or 30 slides long. When you look at them your eyes glaze over. You finally finish reading, but it’s still not clear what the product does, why it’s better, or even who it’s for. I’ve seen one of these docs for most startups I’ve worked with. They typically all miss the point.

So while I’ve been hesitant to write a newsletter dedicated to positioning since so much has been said here (respect to the master of positioning, April Dunford), I finally know what I need to say here. We are losing the plot with positioning exercises. We aren’t seeing the forest through the trees. We are getting lost in the sauce

The result of these overworked positioning exercises is a lack of clarity on who products are for, what the products are, and how they are different.

Now this might seem paradoxical, but I’m not arguing that the positioning process and details are a waste of time. In fact I think the opposite. I’m arguing we aren’t getting to the end of the line with the right "answer” to positioning.

Think of this like long division, the research and process is the work and positioning is the answer. The problem with positioning is people focus too much on showing the work instead of producing the right answer. Maybe you’ll get some points for that, but you definitely won’t ace the test with the right work and wrong answer.

This newsletter covers:

1. Product marketing research ≠ positioning: I separate the process(es) of audience, market, and product research from the writing of positioning. The point of product marketing research is to get in the weeds, dive deep, and get a complete picture of the space your company is playing in. The point of positioning is the opposite: it’s to synthesize this information and get out of the weeds.

2. Positioning is ultimately about comparison. You’re explaining how your product solves the problem better than alternatives and fits in the market. To make this easier, I organize all of positioning strategy into 4 categories based on product type and the thing you're comparing your product to. You need to pick just one.

3. Positioning consists of filling out 3 blank spaces—for every “product” you offer: Who is it for? What is it? Why is it better? You then refine your positioning to create messaging for audience segments, funnel, stages, channels, etc.

I also collaborated with positioning expert Anthony Pierri to share how to turn positioning into homepage copy through 3 real-world examples.

Positioning & messaging teardown, with Anthony Pierri

Emily Kramer and Anthony Pierri

June 27, 2024

Read full story

New look, same great content

You have may noticed that MKT1 looks a bit different when you opened our newsletter today. Thanks to my good friend Jess at Goodside Studio, who collaborated with me on the updated brand.

How to run a positioning process that yields a clear, differentiated result

Common positioning exercise mistakes

The problem with almost all positioning frameworks: They take you way too far into the weeds. The goal of positioning is to make it abundantly clear how you’re different from the (appropriate) alternative. That’s it.

I’ve seen the same things go wrong many times. Here’s what I see most often, even for companies who follow positioning frameworks to a tee.

Why do these things happen? Landing on the wrong positioning and/or copy typically results from too many cooks in the kitchen, fear of picking the wrong direction, confusion due to too many audience segments, and/or forgetting what funnel stage, channel, or ICP you’re writing for.

Positioning hierarchy

One more thing before I get to the positioning process: Product positioning (the pink section below) is not your brand story—it’s a subset of your overall brand story. You can do product positioning before you figure out your overall brand story or vice versa, but don’t conflate the two.

This newsletter focuses on your overall product positioning, for your primary audience. If needed, re-run the positioning process for individual products. Once you start adapting positioning to each audience, funnel stage, and channel, that’s messaging.

For more on telling your overall story, check out this newsletter on marketing perceptions.

The MKT1 positioning process

To avoid getting lost in the sauce when doing positioning:

Run distinct exercises for the following: PMM research, choosing your product type & comparator, defining your positioning statement, and writing messaging.
Involve the right functional leaders during the process, and share your positioning statement with the entire company when done. Focus on the statement, not sharing all the source material and research!
When sharing, link out to research and details for people to review on their own.

A couple notes on semantics and process:

Writing a positioning statement requires doing your homework in advance. As I mentioned, I call this product marketing research.
Positioning is not the same as messaging or copy. Messaging and copywriting is the process of applying positioning to various audiences, channels, funnel stages, etc.
When you have multiple audiences, refine your messaging for each audience segment.
The entire positioning process is quarterbacked by a Product Marketer (once you have a product marketer) in collaboration with founders, head of product, and head of sales…But marketing is leading the charge.

Wondering what this looks like in practice? I have a 1-page template for sharing your positioning statement for paid subscribers.

Step 1: Do product marketing research

If you try to write a positioning statement and you haven’t done your research, you will spin your wheels forever and won’t end up in the right place.

Product marketing research is an ongoing process and it’s never done as your audience, marketing, and product are always changing—but once you’ve done a basic analysis you can start to work on positioning. Continue to refine your product marketing research in these 3 areas as you scale.

This research not only informs your positioning but also informs your entire marketing strategy–you must know your audience, what’s happening in your market, and how your product fits in for everything you do in marketing! So, don’t do this process for the sole purpose of writing positioning. Do it for the sake of building a high-impact marketing strategy and to write better positioning.

More on how positioning drives your overall marketing strategy in this newsletter.

Here are the components of product marketing research:

To do product marketing research well, you’ll understand all of the bullets in the far right column above when “done”. The good news: this research is much easier today than even a year ago due to modern tools + AI, some examples:

Use Apollo.io (our sponsor) to map your entire TAM (total addressable market), push these companies into your CRM, and understand firmographics for each target company and demographics for each contact.
To analyze competitors without having to dig around on each competitor’s website, use Ignition to create competitive battlecards with AI and/or use Clay to scrape competitors' websites.

While doing this research, don’t duplicate work across your company, get alignment instead.

Alignment with the product team is critical. At the highest level, make sure you agree on the problem(s) you are solving for your audience.
Across product and GTM, align on jobs to be done or use cases, personas that your product can serve, and how your product is actually different from alternatives—customer success and support teams are often super valuable here.

The outputs of product marketing research that are most useful for positioning include:

A prioritized list of audience segments, and a clearly defined primary audience to focus your positioning on. Don’t be afraid to get narrow. For more on going narrow with a wedge-in marketing strategy, read this newsletter.
A clear mapping of competitors, a 2x2 competitive matrix can work
A clear definition of the primary problem your product solves today.

After product marketing research is often when positioning starts to go very wrong. Companies try to fit everything they just discovered into some complicated positioning statement and then spew all of this out as copy on the homepage. Avoid this by selecting your product type and comparator next—and use that to write a focused positioning statement.

Step 2: Identify your product type and comparator for positioning

This step helps you find your focus and figure out what you’re positioning against. To do this, identify what type of product you are and then determine what you’re comparing your product to when positioning.

Here are the 4 product types, how I define them, corresponding comparators, how product and/or solution aware your audience typically is for each product type, and examples.

A few reminders and notes about the product type selection process:

When picking your product type, keep in mind the primary audience you selected in your product marketing research process.
10x better is a bit of a hyperbolic phrase. It’s difficult to beat an incumbent on everything, so narrow down to an audience or use case you are actually better for!
If you get stuck, deciding between vertical solution and new way or 10x better product types, choosing vertical solution typically leads to more effective positioning.
Similarly, if you get stuck between buy vs. build and new way, you should likely choose buy vs. build.

If you can’t find a product type that matches what your company is building, 2 things might be happening:

Your product just isn’t differentiated. If you are a “me too” product, sometimes you can narrow down your audience enough to stand out. In these cases you can try to compensate with go-to-market efforts, but it’s going to be an uphill battle! Companies that win, differentiate on both product and go-to-market.
Your audience is too broad. Narrow down your audience to a segment where your product really stands out. Focus your marketing efforts here. This doesn’t mean you need to turn away other audiences if they sign up (or even talk to sales)—but sometimes turning people not in your ICP away is helpful for overall company focus.

Your product type will likely change over time

Before you pick your product type, know that it can and likely will change over time, as your market, audience, and product change. As you evolve, other companies likely will pop up in the same space with a similar solution. So at some point everyone is trying to prove they are the best solution in an existing category.

Some examples:

A vertical product is launched as a wedge-in to a larger market, and eventually competes in that broader existing category.
- I.e. Hubspot started as a tool for marketers, and is now for all of GTM and competes against Salesforce in the CRM category.
A new way of doing things today eventually evolves into a defined category and you have to remain differentiated.
- I.e. Asana was a new way of organizing and managing work, and now it’s part of the work management category. Oddly, defining this category was a huge challenge–I guess the words were staring at us all along.
If your product is an external solution to replace an internal process, eventually the external products become so much better than the internal solutions, those external solutions become their own category.
- I.e. Segment replaced connecting the dots on internal data, and now CDP is a defined category and most established SaaS companies use a tool in that category.

Choosing your product type and corresponding comparator is the most skipped over part of the entire positioning process. Don’t skip this! If you get this wrong and/or your audience wrong, you’ll be positioning your product against the wrong thing to the wrong people, which simply doesn’t work.

The challenge of positioning a “new way” of doing something & why you probably shouldn’t define a new category

I think “new way” positioning is the most difficult of all 4 product types–by far. Most marketers (and founders) lose sight of the goal when positioning a new way of doing something. The goal is to make your specific audience problem, solution, and product aware. Instead, they waste time trying to make the perfect category name happen or become overly focused on competitors building “new ways” too.

Creating a category very rarely makes sense until you are a very established company. Rather than slapping a confusing category name on the new way, use descriptive language to provide a clear frame of reference and benefit.
Early competitors playing in the same emerging category, typically help you grow, not hurt you. These early competitors can actually help you define and establish a new way of solving an existing problem.
The solution: Position against using “nothing” or the “old way”. Messaging and copy can help you differentiate against emerging competitors, but this not the primary, top-of-homepage messaging.
Remember: The vast majority of your customers at this stage will come from people not using a solution like yours–not from the emerging competitors.
I.e. in the early days of Asana, winning against Trello wasn’t the focus of positioning. Convincing all teams they needed to manage projects and tasks in a structured way was the challenge we needed to overcome with positioning—Trello only made this easier for us.

More from MKT1

✂️ Templates for paid subscribers: Paid subscribers can find all templates here, including our positioning and product marketing templates which include a positioning statement template, an audience research template, and a homepage messaging template.

🧑‍🚀 Job board: See roles from the MKT community. Paid subscribers can add jobs to our job board for free.

👁️ Related newsletters: Creating a homepage, Fixing your demo flow, Effective pricing pages

📖 Keep reading: Paid subscribers get access to the rest of this newsletter which includes steps 3 and 4 in the process: determining your positioning and turning it into messaging and copy.