[Summary] How To Nail Product Positioning by April Dunford — 3 Takeaways, 2 Quotes, 1 Question.
If you decide to go north, you cannot go south at the same time.
In my opinion, positioning is the most interesting and important area of a marketer’s job. Everything from audience strategy, to creative strategy, to media strategy stems from positioning — which is the act of deliberately defining how you are the best at something that a specific market cares a lot about.
With that, I’d like to share what is quite possibly my favourite marketing book of all time: Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning So Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It by April Dunford. It’s a book that I believe should be a staple on many marketers’ desks.
While a book on positioning isn’t new, a lot of previous books such as Al Ries and Jack Trout’s Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind tend to lack an actionable framework with a step-by-step process.
If you’re a founder, marketer, or salesperson and you’re noticing that: new prospects can’t quite figure out what you’re selling, or that you’re acquiring leads but having trouble converting them to paid customers, or that your marketing communication just isn’t quite resonating with your audience — you might want to take a look at April’s book!
Here are a few things (among many) which I took away from the book.
3 Takeaways
#1: Your competitors may not be who you think they are — and it starts by asking your happiest customers.
According to April, creating your positioning strategy starts with your happiest customers. These are folks who just “get” your product — not only do they quickly understand what you offer and can’t wait to buy it (without any discounts!), but they also can’t wait to tell others about it.
The key is to understand what these happy customers would do if you didn’t exist. It doesn’t matter who you define as your competitors, because your customers are likely using a different frame of reference.
April uses an example of a database product. When asking customers about competitive alternatives, you would expect they would list out other super-technical database products, but actually the alternative according to them is “use a pen and paper” or “hire an intern to do it”.
Similarly, if we take April’s book “Obviously Awesome” (meta), one would think that the alternative is simply another book on positioning or branding. However, if April were to interview me (ie. one of her happiest customers), she would discover that my end goal isn’t really to read a book on positioning: my end goal is to increase my company’s revenue. Isn’t that why we’re all here? Therefore, my alternatives would probably be “spend more money on Facebook Ads” or “run more discounts”.
By understanding what your happiest customers would do if you didn’t exist, you’ll be in a better position to frame your product in the best possible light.
#2: Go beyond features, go beyond benefits, and articulate the value.
I think most marketers are aware of the concepts of features and benefits. A feature of a toothpaste brand is “teeth whitening technology”. The benefit is “brighter smile”. Many would stop here.
However, articulating the value takes the benefit one step further by putting it in the context of an underlying goal that your customer is trying to achieve. In this case, the value of the toothpaste is actually to “boost your self-confidence”.
Again, taking April’s book for example, a unique feature is her actionable “10-step positioning process”. A few benefits to someone like me is “improve conversion rates”, “improve return on ad spend”, or “increase customer satisfaction”. However, if I’m being honest, my end goal goes a bit deeper than that. The true value for me is — quite frankly — “impressing my boss”, “feeling accomplished among my peers”, or “a sense of mastery in my job”.
Articulating the value is all about asking: “What does that mean for my customer? What will they accomplish because of my product?”
#3: People use what they know to understand what they don’t know.
April describes positioning as “context setting” for products. Oftentimes, consumers understand very little about your industry, let alone your product — therefore, they use existing concepts to help understand what they don’t know. Positioning involves establishing that frame of reference in order to forge associations with things that already exist in people’s minds.
Some examples are companies that use copy such as “The Uber for ____” (“Oh, so it’s a marketplace that connects me with other ____”) or “Artificial Intelligence” (“Oh, so it’s advanced and uses algorithms and whatnot”).
April outlines a few ways of discovering the right context for your product in her book, so I won’t cover that here. Essentially though, a brand should be deliberately selecting that frame of reference for their consumers — more importantly, the associations which come with that frame should lend themselves to highlight the strengths of your product or service.
By choosing that frame of reference, you’re giving consumers the right clues about what to compare you with and, therefore, solidify where and how you’re positioned in their minds.
2 Quotes
#1:
The frame of reference that a potential customer chooses can make or break a business. Coke is much more than just fizzy water in the same way that a concert violinist is more than just a street performer with a fiddle.
#2:
Think about your best customers. Everything about doing business with them is different. They understood your product immediately and couldn’t wait to get their hands on it. They bought quickly and instead of asking for a cheaper price, they might have told you your product should be priced higher. They tell their friends about your product, and not only do they not churn, they will fight anyone who tries to take it away from them. They don’t just like your product, they loooooove it.
1 Question
What would my customers do if my product didn’t exist?
