From Mom Testing to Positioning

I'm now 6 months into my journey with LegUp Health. We launched V1 of our software-enabled service in May 2020 and we're now generating revenue from 10+ clients and growing.

The two biggest challenges we've had to overcome so far have been:

1. Validating our idea, and
2. Acquiring our first 10 customers.

The Mom Test provided a terrific framework for working through these two issues. I highly recommend it if you're still in the idea validation / acquiring your first customers phase.

So now that we have confidence in our idea and we have some initial customer traction, we're facing our third biggest challenge:

3. How do we explain our company/product to potential customers?

In business-lingo, this is called positioning. I imagine most new businesses deal with this challenge at some point. To grow, we need our target market to quickly understand what we do and why we are better than our alternatives. This is really hard. And, unfortunately, The Mom Test doesn't really help with this.

So, I've been trying different things to figure this out.

For example, I put together a slide deck that goes over LegUp Health's narrative and value proposition. Here's the link: leguphealth.com/slides. I've shared it with a lot of people and asked for feedback. The feedback suggests I'm not quite there. But, the feedback hasn't helped me figure out "how" to get there. While the messaging has come a long way, I still don't have the confidence I've nailed it.

I'm also trying different narratives in my outreach to potential clients. But, without spamming a ton of people or spending a ton of money on traffic acquisition so we can run meaningful A/B tests, it's hard to know what messaging version performs better.

Last week, my podcast co-host (Tyler King) recommended a book to me called Obviously Awesome. If The Mom Test is a framework for idea validation and acquiring your first customers, then it appears Obviously Awesome is the framework for figuring out your positioning.

According to the book, positioning is “the act of deliberately defining how you are the best at something that a defined market cares a lot about.”

The book says we should think of positioning as “context setting” for a product. I.e. Good positioning provides the right clues that leads to the right context to understand your product.

When customers encounter a product they have never seen before, they look for contextual clues to help them figure out what it is, who it’s for and why they should care. According to the book, good positioning gives customers the ability to easily understand what your product is, why it’s special, and why it matters to them.

The book shares a 10-step framework for figuring out how to position (i.e. explain) your company.

1. Understand the customers who love your product
2. Form a positioning team
3. Align your positioning vocabulary and let go of your positioning baggage
4. List your true competitive alternatives
5. Isolate your unique attributes or features
6. Map the attributes or features to value “themes”
7. Determine who cares a lot about what you are doing
8. Find a market frame of reference that highlights your strengths and determine how to position it
9. Layer on a trend (if possible)
10. Make your positioning shareable

I'm going to work through this framework this week and I'm happy to share my experience here if it's interesting to anyone.

In the meantime, I'm wondering if any of you have additional tips / advice on how to approach this "positioning" challenge?