Positioning
Positioning is how a product is a leader at delivering something that a well-defined set of customers cares a lot about. Without positioning, desirability tests fail in ways that look like "the customers didn't want it" when the real problem is that the team showed the wrong customers the wrong message.
Goal
To produce a clear, specific positioning statement that the team can use as the basis for landing pages, ad copy, prototype framing, and other desirability test materials.
Context
Most desirability test failures fall into one of two camps:
- Bland positioning that nobody disagrees with. "Better. Faster. More integrated." The customer reads it, doesn't disagree, and also doesn't act. The team concludes nobody wants the product when the real signal was that the message wasn't sharp enough to motivate anyone.
- Sharp positioning aimed at the wrong audience. A specific message that resonates with a small niche, run past a general audience that doesn't fit the niche. The conversion rate looks bad because the test was measuring the wrong customer.
A positioning step before designing the experiment fixes both.
The five questions
Adapted from April Dunford's positioning framework. Work through them in order.
1. Who are your competitors?
If your product didn't exist, what would these customers use? "Do nothing" is a valid alternative. Most products lose to do nothing more often than they lose to a named competitor.
2. What makes you unique?
How are you better than the alternatives? Set the criteria for comparison yourself: don't leave this up to customers. Customers do compare you against your competitors so be explicit about how you are different and better, or worse. Honesty here builds trust.
3. How is that useful for customers?
What are the jobs a person is trying to do, and how does this improve things for them? "Unique" only matters if the uniqueness translates into a real customer benefit.
4. Who cares about this value, a lot?
Start with a niche and expand from there. The temptation is to claim broad appeal ("anyone could use this!") but a positioning that sells to everyone usually sells to nobody. Identify the customer segment that cares the most about your unique value, and design the test for them.
5. What market do you want to focus on?
Use the customer identification from step 4 to pick a market. The market is the place where the customer who cares lives.
Worked example: Janna Systems
Janna Systems was a CRM provider in the late 1990s competing against Siebel.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Who are your competitors? | Siebel (the market leader) |
| What makes you unique? | We can model relationships in a different way |
| How is that useful for customers? | Get insight into interpersonal relationships and understand who might have influence over a deal in process |
| Who cares about this value, a lot? | Relationship sales people doing high-value, low-volume sales |
| What market do you want to focus on? | Investment banking, where the CRM USP and the sales people's needs align well |
The first two answers alone would have produced bland marketing ("Better than Siebel, with relationship modelling"). Adding the bottom three turns it into a sharp message aimed at a specific buyer.
Two common mistakes
Mistake 1: Being too bland
"We model relationships in a different way" answers questions 1 and 2 but stops there. It's too generic. What does modelling relationships mean for the customer in practice? Without specifics, the message is forgettable.
Mistake 2: Highlighting value but lacking specificity
"Useful for interpersonal relationships" answers question 3 but stops there. Who cares about this enough to act? You're leaving it up to customers to interpret the value of interpersonal connections. Some will, most won't.
The positioning gets sharp when all five questions are answered together.
What to do with the output
The positioning statement is not necessarily what goes on the public website. It is what goes on the desirability-test materials: the landing page, the ad, the prototype framing, the email sent to test participants. The team uses it to make sure they are testing the right value with the right audience.
Once the team knows the message resonates with the niche, they can decide whether the public-facing positioning matches (it usually should) or differs (sometimes the headline product needs broader positioning while the niche message lives in a vertical-specific landing page).
Anti-patterns
- Skipping straight to copy without going through the five questions. The marketing copy ends up either bland or aimed at the wrong audience.
- Letting the team's enthusiasm define the positioning. "We could be useful for X, and Y, and Z..." Positioning that lists every possible use case has no positioning.
- Refusing to start with a niche. "But the product is for everyone." That may come later. The desirability test only works if the people seeing it fit the description in the message.
- Treating positioning as a one-time exercise. Positioning evolves as the team learns what resonates. Revisit it when conversion data surprises the team.