Positioning: how to explain what you've built

You can reach exactly the right person and still lose them in the first sentence. They have the problem, they can afford what you've made, and your page leaves them trying to work out exactly what you're offering.

Every piece of marketing that follows inherits that confusion. Your homepage explains one product, your social bio seems to describe another, and your sales message adds a third version. And the person seeing all three - your future customer - has to start again each time.

PositioningThe choice of how customers should understand a product: who it is for, what they should compare it with, which result it helps create, and why they should choose it over what they do now. is the decision underneath those explanations. It sets out who the product is for, what they should compare it with, and why they should care more about you than anyone else.

Start with what they're doing now

The easiest place to go wrong is a competitor list. You search for products that look like yours, put them in a spreadsheet, and assume the customer is choosing between the same logos; but unfortunately, customers are under no obligation to respect the competitor category you made for them (very annoying).

April Dunford's positioning method starts somewhere more revealing: what would your customer do if your product disappeared? They may use another product; they may also use a spreadsheet, piece the work together by hand, pay a person, leave the problem alone, or accept the occasional mess.

For some productivity, research, and content products, the present-day answer includes ChatGPT or Claude with a Skill or even a harness. The customer may already be paying for it and know how to make it produce an adequate answer, so if “powered by AI” is your differentiatorA capability, approach, or trade-off that separates the product from the alternatives the customer considers., that gives them no reason to switch. Your difference has to come from the job you handle, the information you use, what you give back, and where their judgment remains in the process.

The alternatives your customer names are the ones that belong in your positioning. Including every product you found online makes the comparison wider without making it more accurate.

Five answers make the position

Before you write a homepage sentence, you need to make a few connected decisions about who the product is for, what customers do now, what changes for them, and what they should compare it with. Dunford separates these decisions into five parts; this version starts with questions in ordinary language, and includes the commercial terms because you'll see them elsewhere.

The category creates expectations before you've explained a featureSomething the product does or contains. A feature becomes relevant to positioning when it creates a result the chosen customer values and the current alternative can't provide in the same way.. Calling a product a CRM, a marketplace, or an operating tool changes who people think it is for, what they expect it to do, and which products or homemade systems they compare it with.

“The X of Y” can describe the wrong product

I saw a pre-launch company lead its website with “the X of Y,” where X depended on people joining, staying active, and getting a result from one another. That network was a small part of the product; most of the product helped each customer run a piece of work on their own.

The description made the smaller feature sound like the reason the product existed. It also asked a visitor to believe that enough other people would turn up, which created a concern the operating tool didn't need to create.

This example shows how the first comparison can pull attention away from the larger job; customer response still has to decide whether the replacement works.

Write three possible positions

There are several ways you can frame the same product. Writing three of them down gives you a choice between ideas, instead of polishing the first sentence until you can no longer tell whether it makes sense (this happens literally every time, within every fledgling product business).

The appointment-deposit product from the previous chapter is for independent dog groomers who arrange bookings directly. They currently chase deposits in messages, take bank transfers, send reminders by hand, or take no deposit at all; the product gives them a payment link and sends the reminder without replacing the diary they already use.

The versus-led version gives this product the clearest comparison, although you'd still need to check whether groomers describe the problem that way.

One positioning statement, three versions

Once you've chosen the idea, write it three times. Each version is slightly longer, but should effectively describe the same product, customer, comparison, outcome, and difference. These all serve different purposes across all points of your go-to-marketing mixThe combination of places and methods a business uses to present, sell, price, and distribute its product. In this chapter it includes the different places where the same position needs to appear..

1. A one- or two-sentence elevator pitch

[Product] replaces the deposit chase with one payment link and an automatic reminder, while independent dog groomers keep the diary they already use.

This version can sit in a social profile, the first lines of an email, the top of a page, a product listing, or your answer when somebody asks what you're building.

2. A short paragraph

[Product] helps independent dog groomers collect deposits without chasing bank transfers through messages. You send one payment link, the client gets an automatic reminder, and your existing diary stays exactly where it is.

This version works when a profile, partner introduction, proposal, or short product description gives you a little more room.

3. A long paragraph

[Product] is for independent dog groomers who arrange appointments directly and lose a large part of the working day when a client doesn't arrive. It replaces the messages, bank details, and manual reminders involved in taking a deposit with one payment link and an automatic reminder for the client. The groomer keeps the diary and booking process they already use, so they can add a deposit without moving the rest of the business into another system.

The longer version belongs in an About page, pitch deck, press note, marketplace listing, or sales follow-up. It uses the extra space to explain more of the situation and mechanism.

People need to recognize you before they can remember you

Advertising used to have fewer places to fragment across, but we now exist in an attention economyA way of describing the competition for people's limited attention across advertising, media, platforms, devices, and everyday life. with brands competing busily for their customer's time, energy, and mental space. You now have to work harder for attention, so the same positioning needs to appear everywhere your brand does.

Forrester's B2B buying surveys recorded an average of 17 interactions per buying cycle in 2019 and 27 in 2021 (meaning a customer has to engage with your brand this many times before taking action). McKinsey's 2024 B2B Pulse research, based on nearly 4,000 decision-makers in 13 countries, found that buyers used an average of ten interaction channels, up from five in 2016. These are separate studies with different definitions; neither supports a magic number of times every customer must see a brand before buying. So we just know that it's a lot.

They do describe a customer meeting the same business in more places. A homepage, social post, podcast introduction, review, sales call, and product page can add to one another productively; if each presents a different customer, category, or result, it all asks the customer to learn the business again. So, it's our job to make this as easy as possible for them to buy.

Kantar's Brand Imprint research covered 10,500 interviews across more than 200 brands and more than 1,300 brand cues. Its finding is straightforward: consistent cues across time, channels, and products reinforce memory. Marketers often call the chance that a brand comes to mind when somebody is ready to buy mental availabilityThe chance that a brand comes to mind when somebody enters a buying situation. Consistent words, ideas, and recognizable brand cues help build the memory over time..

Consistency doesn't require the same paragraph pasted everywhere. A Reddit post, an ad, an event introduction, and a sales call have different jobs; the three lengths let the expression fit the space while the association stays the same.

Repeating one customer, one comparison, one result, and one meaningful difference gives the person a chance to remember you at the time when their problem becomes pressing enough to purchase.

Score the position

This table is an editing check to use before you test the words with customers. Score each part from one to five; the lowest row tells you where the rewrite belongs, while a total can hide one serious weakness behind four decent scores.

A score of four or five in every row is a sensible publication bar. Where the product is pre-launch, believability comes from a specific mechanism and a modest promise; invented results make the sentence sound stronger and leave the founder with nothing they can prove.

Let strangers tell you what the words did

Show the three versions to somebody who matches your chosen customer group and has no need to be kind about your work. After they read it, ask them to describe their own account of what the product is, who it is for, what it replaces, and why they might choose you. This will give you the most productive feedback in whether or not your positioning works.

That conversation tests understanding. Replies, clicks, calls, trials, payments, and later use tell you whether the position helped the right person act.

Prompt: develop and score my product position

Copy the prompt below into the model you use. Attach the customer and starting-market records from the previous chapters if you have them.

You are helping me develop the positioning for an early-stage product.

Work only from the information I provide. Keep facts, customer language,
assumptions, and missing information separate. Don't invent customer quotes,
results, proof, competitors, market size, or product capabilities.

First, extract:
1. The customer group I'm concentrating on.
2. What those customers currently do when my product doesn't exist, including
   manual work, other products, doing nothing, and ChatGPT with a custom prompt
   if it is relevant.
3. What my product can do that those alternatives can't.
4. The result that difference creates for the customer.
5. The familiar product category that creates accurate expectations.
6. The proof I have, and the proof I still need.

Then create three candidate positions:
- outcome-led;
- category-led;
- versus-led.

For each candidate, explain which supplied facts it uses and which assumption
could make it wrong. Score it from 1 to 5 for specificity, differentiation,
outcome clarity, believability, and usability. Don't add the scores together;
identify the weakest row.

Recommend one candidate and explain the choice in ordinary language. Then write
the same position at three lengths:
1. A one- or two-sentence elevator pitch.
2. A slightly longer short paragraph.
3. A long paragraph covering what the product is, who it is for, what it
   replaces, the result it is designed to create, and why its difference is
   believable.

Check that all three versions keep the same customer, comparison, result, and
difference. Adapt the amount of explanation without turning them into three
different businesses.

Finish with:
- the exact questions I should ask matching customers;
- the words or ideas most likely to confuse them;
- the customer actions that would support or weaken the position;
- the first part I should rewrite if the position scores below 4 anywhere.

My information:
[Paste my product, customer, alternative, customer language, capabilities,
results, proof, limits, and unknowns here.]

Your finished record contains one customer, one comparison, one result, one difference, and the three versions you'll use across the marketing mix. The next chapter can then choose where that repeated idea should meet the customer first.

Sources

• Dunford, April. “A Quickstart Guide to Positioning.” Accessed 13 September 2026.
• Dunford, April. “Positioning and Competition.” 28 December 2020. Accessed 13 September 2026.
• Forrester. “B2B Vital Signs: Using Interaction Insights to Drive Engagement and Performance Optimization.” 12 July 2022. Accessed 13 September 2026.
• Kantar. “What are distinctive assets, and why are they important?” Accessed 13 September 2026.
• McKinsey & Company. “Five fundamental truths: How B2B winners keep growing.” 12 September 2024. Accessed 13 September 2026.