Positioning: are you talking about your product effectively?

For many companies, positioning does not match ICP. It should:

Positioning is how you communicate the value of your product. How you talk about it. What you say it does. What benefits it brings. Including in comparison with the alternatives

It ensures that:

1️⃣ Marketing knows how to communicate through the website, ads, content, and all other channels.

2️⃣ Sales knows what to lean into when engaging with their prospects.

3️⃣ Anyone giving a presentation knows how to tell the consistent story.

4️⃣ And it helps confirm you are building the product for the same people you are selling it to.

If your product/engineering team does not see the positioning reflecting the product they’re building, you have a big problem. Either the positioning is out of kilter or the product is going in the wrong direction.

There are two key things in the definition of positioning to focus on.

🔑 The value of the product. Not the features, but the value that it will bring customers who use it.

🔑 Comparison with alternatives. There are ALWAYS alternatives. Your customer is running their business today without your product, maybe without any directly competing product. Therefore, their current spreadsheets or manual work or whatever is an alternative.

How do ICP and Positioning interact?

▶️ ICP is who you are selling to

▶️ Positioning is how you speak about your solution

They are deeply interrelated. If your positioning does not reflect what your ICP needs, in particular the value they will get from your product, then one of them is wrong.

You can tackle this from either direction.

⭐ Work through who will benefit most from your solution – your ICP – and as part of this it will be clear what the key messages are. This will become a core part of your Positioning.

⭐ Alternatively, start from Positioning. How will you speak most compellingly about your solution and how the value stacks up against alternatives? This will commonly lead you to the companies that will benefit most.

If you are looking at positioning, I recommend two resources.