Product Positioning Framework
This skill implements the product positioning methodology from April Dunford's "Obviously Awesome." It provides a structured, repeatable process for defining how your product is the best in the world at delivering something a well-defined set of customers cares a lot about. Positioning is the foundational strategic exercise that determines how customers perceive your product, what they compare it to, and ultimately whether they buy it.
Core Principle
Positioning is not messaging. Positioning is context.
Positioning defines the context within which customers evaluate your product. It determines what category customers place you in, what alternatives they compare you against, which features they pay attention to, and how they judge your value. Get positioning right, and everything downstream — messaging, sales pitches, marketing campaigns, pricing — becomes dramatically easier. Get it wrong, and no amount of clever copywriting or advertising spend will save you. Customers who don't understand what you are will never understand why you matter.
The foundation of great positioning is understanding that customers always evaluate products relative to alternatives. There is no such thing as absolute product perception. A product that seems expensive in one context seems cheap in another. A feature that seems innovative against one set of competitors seems table-stakes against another. Your job is to deliberately choose the context that makes your unique strengths obvious.
Scoring
Goal: 10/10 — Rate the positioning quality of any product on a 0-10 scale based on the following criteria:
| Score | Description |
|---|---|
| 0-2 | No clear positioning. Customers can't explain what the product is or who it's for. |
| 3-4 | Vague positioning. Category is unclear, differentiation is weak, target customer is "everyone." |
| 5-6 | Partial positioning. Some components are clear but others are missing or inconsistent. Team members describe the product differently. |
| 7-8 | Strong positioning. All five components are defined. Team is aligned. Customers generally understand the value. |
| 9-10 | Exceptional positioning. Every component reinforces the others. Customers immediately understand the product, why it's different, and why they should care. The positioning creates an "aha" moment. |
The 10 Positioning Components
| Component | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Competitive Alternatives | What customers would use if your product didn't exist | Spreadsheets, manual processes, hiring a consultant, doing nothing |
| Unique Attributes | Features or capabilities only your product has | Real-time collaboration on financial models |
| Value Themes | Benefits customers get from your unique attributes | Save 10 hours/week on financial reporting |
| Best-Fit Customers | Characteristics of people who care most about your value | Mid-market CFOs managing 3+ business units |
| Market Category | The market you describe yourself as part of | Financial planning and analysis (FP&A) software |
| Relevant Trends | Market dynamics that make your positioning resonate now | Remote finance teams need real-time collaboration |
| Positioning Statement | Internal summary of positioning for team alignment | "For mid-market CFOs, we are the FP&A platform built for real-time collaboration across distributed teams" |
| Sales Narrative | How positioning translates into a compelling sales story | Problem → old way → new way → your solution → proof |
| Messaging | External-facing language derived from positioning | "Financial planning that keeps up with your business" |
| Content Strategy | How positioning guides what content to create | Thought leadership on collaborative finance, case studies from multi-unit companies |
The 5-Step Positioning Process
Step 1: Identify Your Competitive Alternatives
Core concept: Start by understanding what your best customers would do if your product vanished tomorrow. These are your true competitive alternatives — not just direct competitors, but any way customers solve the problem today, including manual processes, spreadsheets, hiring someone, or simply doing nothing.
Why it works: Customers always evaluate products relative to alternatives. If you don't understand the real alternatives, you can't understand what "differentiated" means in your customer's mind. Your positioning is only as strong as the alternatives you're positioning against.
Key insights:
- Ask existing happy customers, not prospects — they've already chosen you and can tell you what they switched from
- The most common competitive alternative is often not another product — it's a spreadsheet, a manual process, or the status quo
- "Do nothing" is your biggest competitor in many markets
- Different customer segments may have different competitive alternatives
- Group similar alternatives together (e.g., "general-purpose spreadsheets" rather than listing Excel, Google Sheets, and Numbers separately)
- Focus on what your best-fit customers considered, not all customers
Product applications:
| Context | Application | Example |
|---|---|---|
| New product launch | Interview early adopters about what they used before | "Before us, 70% used spreadsheets, 20% used a generic PM tool, 10% hired contractors" |
| Repositioning | Survey churned and retained customers about alternatives | Discover that retained customers compared you to consultants, not software |
| Competitive analysis | Map alternatives by customer segment | Enterprise buyers compare to Salesforce; SMBs compare to spreadsheets |
Copy patterns:
- "Unlike [competitive alternative], [product] does [unique thing]"
- "Stop using [painful alternative] for [job]"
- "You've outgrown [alternative]. Here's what comes next."
Ethical boundary: Never misrepresent competitive alternatives. Base them on actual customer research, not assumptions or wishful thinking.
See: Competitive Alternatives Analysis
Step 2: Identify Your Unique Attributes
Core concept: List every attribute — feature, capability, company characteristic, or approach — that you have and your competitive alternatives don't. These must be both unique AND true. Not "better" versions of common features, but genuinely different capabilities.
Why it works: Unique attributes are the raw material of differentiation. If an attribute isn't unique, it can't differentiate you. If it isn't true, you'll lose trust. The goal is an honest inventory of what makes you objectively different.
Key insights:
- Features are the most obvious attributes, but don't stop there — consider architecture, business model, team expertise, approach, integrations, community
- "Better" is not unique — "10% faster" is not a unique attribute; "uses a fundamentally different algorithm that enables real-time processing" might be
- Attributes must survive the "only we" test: "Only we [attribute]"
- Don't confuse attributes with benefits — attributes are facts about your product; benefits are what customers get from those facts
- Cluster related attributes into groups (these will become value themes in the next step)
- It's okay to have attributes that matter to some segments but not others
Product applications:
| Context | Application | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Feature launch | Assess if new feature creates a unique attribute | "We're the only project management tool with built-in time-zone-aware scheduling" |
| Competitive response | Verify your attributes are still unique after competitor updates | Quarterly attribute audit against top 5 alternatives |
| Acquisition | Identify which attributes of the acquired product are truly unique | "Their NLP engine processes medical terminology — no other EMR does this" |
Copy patterns:
- "The only [category] that [unique attrib