Working on your positioning

Positioning is crucial for any startup.

People sometimes mistake positioning for brand identity.

Here is a succinct definition: positioning is how your company is perceived in the market, how it sits in the mind of consumers, and how you differentiate from your competitors.

How do you work on your positioning?

Let’s not reinvent the wheel, April Dunford has written an excellent book that summarizes positioning best practices: Obviously Awesome.

In her book, she shares a straightforward process:

1. List your true competitors: not necessarily a company - eg. Slack’s true competitor is email

2. Define your unique attributes: features/capabilities that make you different. Hint: ease of use is NOT one of those.

3. Map these attributes to the value it adds to customers

4. Define your market category

5. Define who cares most in your market

6. Check if you can use current trends to make your company more interesting at a given point.

In the case of Superdocu, it would (roughly) look like this:

1. Our main competitor is email: this is what people use to collect documents or information.

2. Our unique attribute: we handle the whole document and information lifecycle. We collect first, and then make sure data is always up-to-date.

3. The (main) value we bring: helping companies stay compliant at all times.

4. Market category: we made sure people did not consider us as “Document Management Software” (DMS), and instead chose to be perceived as a company that helps with onboarding.

5. People who care most: companies that need to make sure they are 100% compliant at all times.

6. Trends we can follow: no-code, regtechs, or process automation.

📕 Lesson: your product solves problems, but maybe it isn’t perceived in the right manner by your prospective customers. Work on your positioning so that people understand what you do in a blink. A product can be positioned in many markets: choose yours wisely!

To buy April Dunford’s book 👉https://www.aprildunford.com/obviously-awesome