How to Nail Product Positioning 🎯

Products, even great products, can fail when the positioning is unclear. On the other hand, your product can start growing like weeds when you reposition it correctly. I'll show you a framework that helped me successfully reposition several products, plus I'll give you some examples to get your thinking started.

Positioning is not magic. It won't save bad or useless products, but we are not talking about these here. You have a great product, alright! Then positioning helps your target audience understand faster what value you deliver and "approximately" how you do that. It's like a quick framing for a discussion. It must get my focus from the "fitness and wellness" category to "gym or personal coach" or from the universe of "note-taking apps" to "local and privacy first writing."

When your audience doesn’t quickly understand where your product fits it's hard for them to see why they need it or why they should be digging deeper to understand it.

I’ve learned this firsthand through many mistakes - but here’s the framework that helped me successfully reposition my companies, and several HW/SW or SaaS based products. I'll give you highlights first and then a bit more context for each step, plus some examples.

1. Describe the problem your product is supposed to solve; it's rarely a nice and clean description, especially in early products. But give it a try.

2. Identify competitive alternatives; What would customers use if your solution didn't exist? There are always alternatives, especially in B2B. List them out.

3. Define unique capabilities; these are features or abilities only you, your product or your team can do.

4. Determine value characteristics - link capabilities to customer outcomes and benefits. Think about the jobs-to-be-done framework from your ideal customer perspective.

5. Find a market category that fits you; choose where you compete based on value and alternatives. Find a category and subcategory. You almost always fit into the existing category - use it. It's faster than to create your own.

6. Define and run initial tests; go test what you landed on with some real customers or users. See what they think and if they put you into the box (aka market category) you expected.

7. Prepare reinforcers of relevant context; think content, messaging, sales scripts, community events, and more. It should highlight strengths in your chosen context. 

8. You'll need to iterate on it until it clicks, then you'll have to repeat it until it sticks.

If that looks complicated, don't worry. I bet that you have most of the information you need. Let's look at it in more detail.

Let's look at each step with more context. Positioning is often treated as a marketing exercise, but in reality, it’s the backbone of how your product connects with people. Hence, it's everyone's exercise. A cross-team effort should be led by a CEO or founder because it affects everything. Without good positioning, your product can go unnoticed. And from my experience, good positioning doesn’t just happen.

It's easier to work on this with (or in) early stage teams because the longer you run with your current positioning the more you are stuck with it or the more desperate you are for a half ass quick fix. Both of these mindsets make it hard for teams to see behind their shadow and often it becomes impossible to get anything usable without external support.

But assuming you're fresh and open, here’s the framework I’ve refined and used over the years. It will work for you whether you want to get started today alone, or tomorrow with the whole team, or external facilitator. 

• For founders and product people, it’s always tempting to jump straight to what their product does. Resist that. Instead, focus on the specific problem your audience faces. Don’t water it down. If they’re overwhelmed, frustrated, or losing money - describe that.

• The more details and situations you can describe the better. The sharper your understanding of their pain, the easier it is to make your product their solution.

• Create a list (as long as it takes) of online/offline tools that customers use now, when they're not using your solution. Most of them don't know you even exist, right. There are always alternatives, especially in B2B. Even pen & paper as your CRM alternative, or SMS as your messaging app alternative count.

• It's not about being stupid, it's about putting yourself into their shoes. Reading a book is alternative to Netflix, same as going to a bar looking for a date is alternative to Tinder.

• This means finding and focusing on what only you can do. Your differentiator isn’t a long list of features. It’s the one thing you do that competitors don’t, or can’t. Maybe it’s speed, simplicity, design or a unique angle on a common problem. Whatever it is, own it. Positioning isn’t about being everything to everyone; it’s about being THE solution for the right people.

• Narrowing down to something very specific is regularly one of the highest resistance points with tech founders. Fight that urge to be everything to everyone. It's better to be "THE app for men over 50 that want to build muscle on vegan diet," than to be "an app that helps you grow muscle".

• This looks obvious but look at your product webpage and Twitter bio. Are you that different?

• Think about what is your product hired to do. For what “job to do” is your ideal customer hiring you. Ask yourself (or ask them): “What problem are they solving?”

• You already know that, but I have to repeat it -> people don’t buy tools, they buy outcomes. Show them transformation. They don’t want a “CRM system”; they want fewer missed follow-ups and more closed deals.

• Make it clear how your product changes their reality. Show the “before” and “after,” and let them see themselves in the story.

• Market category influences how buyers evaluate and understand your product. In the most basic framing think - email app vs chat app. Your assumption about features and usage will be different even though they both fulfil same purpose - let people send messages.

• In more detailed example, Toast initially positioned itself as a "restaurant payment system" which put them in competition with generic payment processors. By redefining their category as a "restaurant management platform," they shifted comparisons to comprehensive solutions like Oracle MICROS - instantly making their broader feature set more valuable and justifying higher prices (that were still lower than Micros).

• Choose where you compete based on value and alternatives. You almost always fit into an existing category - use it. It's faster. Don't try to create your own unless absolutely necessary, because you'll lose the benefit of fast-framing for the customer. 
  

• Make sure you test your assumed category frame. The easiest and most relevant ways to test will depend on your stage, product, and industry.  You'll need to create some basic positioning description and frame to test it.

• You can test it on several sales calls, during visits with customers, you can do ads or alternative A/B homepage copy testing. 

• Always test before spending a lot of time on aligning everything with new positioning. Save yourself a lot of time by spending a bit of time first.

• Your main job, after you've decided and tested, is to get everyone aligned and prepared to use context that's playing on your strength in their daily activities. Positioning must be used and understood by both sides of the “product & distribution” equation. 

• Think slogans, messaging, sales scripts, content, community events, and more. It should all highlight strengths in your chosen context. Your marketing and sales should casually plug it everywhere, you should be part of the right industry events, and your product team should aim to continuously improve on unique capabilities.

• I'm sure everyone here understands the truth, that first attempts at positioning might feel right to us but fall flat with others. That's true even if you will test. That’s okay. Positioning is iterative like everything in business and product world. Put it in front of real users, see how they react, and tweak it until they say, “That’s exactly what I needed. Where can I get it? Here's my card!”

• Also your positioning is likely to change as your company or business grows, so don't be afraid to revisit regularly.

Note: Always write everything down, never just think through these questions! Even if you do it alone as just a test. It's powerful when you can go back and see your thinking evolve.

Probably stating the obvious, but positioning for B2B and B2C audiences differs in focus and execution. 

In B2B, we place more emphasis on solving some sort of measurable business challenge (e.g., speed, cost savings, efficiency, ROI) and even more importantly - we need to adapt it to the process of addressing multiple stakeholders with varying priorities and varying understanding. So I'd go for messaging that highlights tangible outcomes and social proof, like case studies or metrics. 

In B2C, positioning is more emotional - often centred on personal benefits, convenience, and experience. The language is often simpler, and storytelling plays a larger role.

In both cases, clarity and relevance are essential, but the way you frame value must align with how each audience thinks and makes decisions. 

Example 1: Fibery (B2B)

• Before: Fibery was positioned as an "all-in-one platform" for your business. While true as a vision statement, it didn’t resonate with target customers. We were not growing. Customer we had liked us, but new customers not coming.

• After: We repositioned it as a "knowledge management platform for startups" and clearly articulated how it helps founders organize chaos. Result? A spike in adoption among early-stage companies.
  

Example 2: Turris Tech (B2B2C)

• Before: Positioned as a generic high-end B2C wifi router brand which had a banger Indiegogo campaign and then was fading away for several years.

• After: Repositioned to emphasize privacy-first, reliable, and secure routers for professionals and tech enthusiasts. We moved from B2C to B2B2C and targeted the US and EU with messaging that highlighted control (open-source hardware and software) and security (unique features), doubling sales in two years.

Right now, I congratulate you! If you've read all the way through, you deserve my admiration (and maybe a free call). I hope I managed to shed a bit of light on positioning mystery. Just know that although it may look complicated to land on the right positioning, the best positioning isn’t over-engineered.

It must feel lite. You want people saying “I get it,” when they read your message. Positioning isn’t as much about selling as it is about clarity. Clarity for your audience and clarity for yourself. 

Tell me, what’s your biggest product positioning challenge? You can ping me on Farcaster or X.
For more serious discussion, book your well-deserved free call to talk about it (after all, you read it all)

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