How to Actually Position Your Product
with April Dunford, Independent (self-employed consultant)
Product positioning defines how your product is the best in the world at delivering value that a well-defined set of customers cares a lot about. April Dunford's 5-step process starts with competitive alternatives, extracts unique attributes, maps them to customer value, identifies the best-fit customer segment, then picks a market frame of reference. You don't start with your customer. You start with what they'd do if you didn't exist.
Why Positioning Has a Positioning Problem {#why-positioning-has-a-positioning-problem}
Louis: April, welcome to Everyone Hates Marketers.
April Dunford: Thanks for having me, Louis. I love the name of this show.
Louis: So let’s start with the elephant in the room. You wrote a whole book about positioning. But most people can’t even agree on what positioning means. Why is that?
April Dunford: Because positioning is one of those concepts that everybody uses but nobody defines the same way. Ask ten marketers what positioning is, you’ll get twelve answers. Some people think it’s a tagline. Some people think it’s a mission statement. Some people think it’s “who’s our target customer.” None of those are positioning.
Louis: So what is it?
April Dunford: Positioning defines how your product is the best in the world at delivering some kind of value that a well-defined set of customers cares a lot about. That’s it. It’s context-setting for your product.
The 5-Step Positioning Process {#the-5-step-positioning-process}
Louis: Walk me through your process.
April Dunford: Step one: identify your competitive alternatives. Not your competitors, your alternatives. What would customers do if your product didn’t exist? That’s usually a spreadsheet, or a manual process, or just doing nothing.
“Positioning is not messaging. Messaging comes from positioning. If your positioning is weak, no amount of clever messaging will save you.”
- April Dunford
Louis: Most companies skip this step entirely.
April Dunford: That’s exactly the problem. They jump straight to “who’s our customer” and then wonder why their messaging doesn’t land.
Why You Start with Competitive Alternatives {#why-you-start-with-competitive-alternatives}
Louis: This is the part that surprised me most. You don’t start with the customer at all.
April Dunford: No. You start with what they’d use instead of you. Because everything else flows from that.
“Most companies start with ‘who is our customer?’ That’s the wrong question. Start with ‘what would they do if you didn’t exist?’”
- April Dunford
Louis: And from competitive alternatives, you extract your unique attributes?
April Dunford: Exactly. What can you do that those alternatives can’t? Then you map those attributes to value for the customer. Then you figure out who cares the most about that value. Then you pick a market frame of reference that makes your value obvious.
The Market Category Trap {#the-market-category-trap}
Louis: Talk to me about category. Because I see so many companies pick a category that works against them.
April Dunford: Category is the context for your product. It sets up buyer expectations. If you pick the wrong category, buyers show up expecting features you don’t have and not caring about the features you do have. It’s a mismatch. And most companies just default to whatever category seems obvious without thinking about whether it actually serves their positioning.
Louis: April, this has been brilliant. Thanks for being on the show.
April Dunford: Thanks, Louis. Keep fighting the good fight.
Quotable moments
"Positioning is not messaging. Messaging comes from positioning. If your positioning is weak, no amount of clever messaging will save you."
"Most companies start with 'who is our customer?' That's the wrong question. Start with 'what would they do if you didn't exist?'"
Related STFO book chapters
Related articles
Product Positioning in 6 No-BS Steps [From 7 Real Experts]
One of the hardest-to-miss symptoms of poor positioning is this: Buyers do not understand what you're selling. And, because they aren't sure if they want any, you probably aren't selling all that much.
13 Positioning Principles From Hungry Hungry Hippos
Positioning is like playing a game of Hungry Hungry Hippos. If the marbles are your potential buyers, and if your product/service is the hippo, you'd better position your hippo to gobble up enough marbles so it doesn't starve.
Key terms
Positioning
Positioning is the upstream work of understanding how you address customer challenges that others overlook. It is built on five elements: job, alternatives, struggles, segment, and category. It is not a tagline exercise. The words come last, not first.
Unique Positioning
Unique positioning is the intersection of job, alternatives, struggles, segment, and category. Each element alone is not unique. The intersection is. The output is a statement that describes your meaningful difference, built for internal clarity, not as a homepage headline.
Alternatives
Alternatives are the different paths or solutions available to people in your segment to reach their goal. They are far broader than competitors. They include indirect competition, makeshift solutions, DIY approaches, and doing nothing. If you only look at direct competitors, you're blind to the real landscape.
