A quickstart guide to positioning

you’ll first need to identify the two basic groups that will be involved in planning: the Leadership group and the individual Teams.

The 5 Components of Positioning: 1) Competitive Alternatives 2) Differentiated “Features” or “Capabilities” 3) Value for customers 4) Target Customer Segmentation 5) Market Category

‍I believe [the positioning statement] exercise is not only pointless but potentially dangerous.

We start with Competitive Alternatives, or what would customers do if our solution didn’t exist. Once we have that, we can ask ourselves, “What do we have that the alternatives do not?” That gives us a list of Differentiated features or Key Unique Attributes. We can then go down that list and ask ourselves, “So what for customers?” Put another way,... See more

history teaches us that companies that create market categories often lose in the long run to companies that gained a market foothold after the hard work of creating the category was already done.

Positioning is like context-setting for products. It’s a bit like the opening scene of a movie.

The components are:

Competitive alternatives

Differentiated “features” or “capabilities”

Value for customers

Target customer segmentation

Market category

Positioning is like context setting for products. It’s a bit like the opening scene of a movie.

‍Positioning defines how your product is a leader at delivering something that a well-defined set of customers cares a lot about.