A Practical Guide to Product Positioning
As a product marketer, you own the product marketing strategy. It's a role that demands a clear vision for how a product fits into the market and connects with customers. But let's be realistic—most product marketing teams are stretched thin. If you're lucky, you have a copywriter. But that’s increasingly rare. More often, your "copywriter" is a friendly large language model like ChatGPT.
This resource gap makes one of your core responsibilities more critical than ever: positioning. When you don't have a dedicated writer to translate strategy into compelling copy, the foundation must be flawless. Leadership often confuses positioning with messaging or even final ad copy, leading to a frustrating cycle of misaligned expectations and under-resourced projects. Who can blame them when so many marketers are confused by the difference.
Getting positioning right is non-negotiable. It’s the strategic bedrock upon which every successful product launch strategy, sales enablement asset, and marketing campaign is built. This guide will walk you through a practical framework to define—and defend—your product’s position in the market.
Pre-Work: Aligning on What Positioning Is (and Is Not)
Before you dive into a positioning exercise, you need to achieve cross-functional alignment on the concept itself. If your stakeholders think they’re walking out of a workshop with a new tagline, you're set up for failure. If the CEO thinks he already has that tagline written, you’re doubly doomed! The output of a positioning project is not customer-facing copy; it's the internal compass that guides all future creative work. Make sure everyone hears and receives that message.
I find that metaphors are powerful tools for explaining this distinction. They help communicate that positioning is the foundational step from which messaging and copy flow.
The Movie Genre: Positioning is the genre of your movie and who stars in it. Is it a sci-fi thriller, a romantic comedy, or an indie drama? Who is the lead actor? Knowing this sets clear expectations before you even see a trailer (the messaging) or watch a scene (the copy).
The Architectural Blueprint: Positioning is the blueprint for a house. Is it a two-story colonial or a modern, single-story bungalow? Is it designed for luxury or for sustainable, minimalist living? The blueprint determines the foundation and overall structure long before you pick out paint colors (messaging) or furniture (copy).
Use these analogies to ensure everyone, especially leadership, understands that this work is about defining the strategic direction. It’s the first step to getting them their headline copy. Your goal is to create a shared understanding that strong positioning precedes effective storytelling in product marketing.
The 5 Components of Powerful Positioning
To build a robust positioning framework, you need to answer five fundamental questions. I’m a big fan of April Dunford’s approach, which provides a clear, step-by-step method. For each step, we’ve included a "Human Exercise" for your team and an "AI Assist" prompt to help you leverage your tools more strategically. Because positioning requires strong cross functional alignment, get key stakeholders together in a room and go through the below steps - together. Bringing people along the journey will make it a lot easier to get final buy in.
Step 1: Uncover the Competitive Alternatives
The first step is to understand what your customers would do if your product didn't exist. This isn't just about direct competitors; it’s about the "before" state. Do they use a competitor's software, a manual spreadsheet, or simply ignore the problem? Your competitive analysis in product marketing must be grounded in real-world user behavior.
Group Exercise: Brainstorm and list all the genuine alternatives your ideal customers use today. Think beyond direct rivals to include "good enough" solutions, internal workarounds, or even inaction.
AI Assist Prompt: "Analyze customer support tickets and sales call transcripts to identify the tools and processes prospects mention using before considering our solution. Summarize the top three non-obvious alternatives."
Step 2: Define Your Differentiated Capabilities
What makes you different? More importantly, what makes you better? This step is about pinpointing the unique features or attributes that your product has and the alternatives lack. Be honest and specific. Vague claims like "easy to use" are not differentiators.
Group Exercise: Identify 3-5 distinct features or capabilities that only your product can claim. Focus on what you have that they don't.
AI Assist: “Review our G2 reviews. Extract direct quotes where customers compare our features favorably against a specific competitor and categorize them by capability.”
Step 3: Translate Capabilities into Customer Value
Features tell, but value sells. No one buys a product for its capabilities; they buy it for the benefit it ultimately delivers. This is where you connect your unique features to a meaningful outcome for the customer. This is the heart of effective messaging and positioning for PMMs.
A simple "so that..." exercise can be incredibly effective here. "Our product has [differentiated capability] so that you can [achieve this value]."
Group Exercise: For each differentiated capability you listed, write a "so that" statement that clearly articulates the benefit to the customer. For example, "We offer one-click integrations with all major accounting software so that you can close your books in half the time."
AI Assist: “Cluster customer feedback by benefit, not features. Summarize top emotional and practical values.”
Step 4: Identify Your Ideal Target Customers
Your product isn't for everyone, and that's a good thing. The value you've just defined will resonate most strongly with a specific group of people. Who are they? Who feels the pain of the problem most acutely and cares most about the value you deliver? Getting this right requires deep customer insights for marketers.
Group Exercise: Define your best-fit customer profile. Look at your existing user base. Who buys the fastest? Who has the highest retention rate? Who are your biggest advocates? Build a persona around their roles, goals, and challenges.
AI Assist Prompt: "Analyze our CRM data for closed-won deals over the last 12 months. Identify common firmographic and demographic patterns among customers with the highest lifetime value and fastest sales cycles."
Step 5: Choose Your Market Category
The final step is to place your product within a market category. This is the frame of reference you give customers to help them quickly understand what you do. Choosing a market category is like choosing a shelf in a supermarket—it instantly tells shoppers what’s inside the box. Getting it wrong can lead to immediate confusion.
Group Exercise: Experiment with two or three potential market categories. For example, are you "project management for agencies" or "creative collaboration software"? Discuss the implications of each. What competitors and pricing expectations does each category evoke?
Human Exercise: Experiment with 2-3 category labels. For each, list the expectations it creates around pricing, features, and competitors.
AI Assist Prompt: "For the category 'AI-powered presentation software,' list the top 5 buyer expectations regarding features, integrations, and pricing models. Then, do the same for the category 'sales enablement platform.'"
Draft Your Positioning Statement
Once you've worked through the five components, you can assemble them into a clear, concise positioning statement. This internal-facing statement becomes the source of truth for your entire organization.
Use this simple format:
For [target customers] who [statement of need or opportunity], [product name] is a [market category] that [statement of key benefit/value]. Unlike [primary competitive alternative], it [statement of key differentiator].
Here’s an example using our own consultancy:
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Your Positioning Recap Checklist
A clear positioning statement is the cornerstone of a scalable product marketing strategy. It aligns teams, guides priorities, and makes every piece of content more effective.
Here’s a quick checklist to recap the process:
Align Stakeholders: Ensure everyone understands positioning is a strategic foundation, not copy.
Identify Alternatives: What would customers do without you?
Pinpoint Differentiators: What unique capabilities do you offer?
Define Value: How do those capabilities benefit the customer?
Focus on Target Audience: Who cares most about that value?
Select a Market Category: What frame of reference helps customers understand you instantly?
Draft the Statement: Assemble the components into a clear, internal-facing guide.
Navigating these strategic conversations can be challenging, especially when you’re also managing launches and creating content. Whether you need a seasoned product marketing consultant to guide your team through this process or are looking for one-on-one product marketing manager coaching to sharpen your strategic skills, getting positioning right is a career-defining move.
If you’re ready to build a product marketing strategy that drives real impact, let’s talk. Book a complimentary strategy session with Trellis today.