I recently revisited April Dunford’s work on positioning, and it completely changed the way I think about the impact of positioning on both product success and broader business outcomes. Her insights made me realize how a well-crafted positioning strategy can be a powerful driver of growth, shaping how customers perceive value and ultimately influencing adoption and market traction. In her book Obviously Awesome, Dunford presents a framework that challenges many outdated approaches—most notably, the ineffective positioning statement exercise. Rather than relying on static templates, she advocates for a dynamic strategy that aligns a product’s strengths with market expectations, ensuring that its unique value is both understood and appreciated by the right audience.

The Problem with Default Positioning

According to Dunford, many companies fall into the trap of positioning themselves based on their original market entry point, even when their product has evolved far beyond that initial focus. Businesses often assume their strengths are obvious to customers, but in reality, most buyers struggle to differentiate between similar offerings. Without clear, intentional positioning, a company’s value proposition can get lost in a sea of comparable products, leading to missed opportunities for growth and adoption.

Let's try to understand her point with an example—a startup developed a high-performance database capable of analyzing massive data sets at unprecedented speeds. However, when they attempted to market it as a database, potential customers dismissed it outright, saying, “We already have Oracle.” The real value of their product—fast data analysis—was buried under an ill-fitting market category. Customers weren’t looking for yet another database; they were looking for better, faster ways to extract insights from their data.

By repositioning the product as a Business Intelligence tool rather than a database, the company shifted its messaging to highlight what truly set it apart. This strategic move reframed their value proposition, making it clear to customers why they should care. This shift didn’t change the technology, but it completely transformed the way customers perceived its usefulness.

The Positioning Statement is Limiting

A common issue with traditional positioning exercises, as Dunford highlights, is the reliance on the classic positioning statement template. This fill-in-the-blank approach gives companies a false sense of completion while failing to produce usable positioning. It assumes there is only one way to position a product and leads to jargon-filled, uninspiring statements that don’t resonate with internal teams or customers. Worse, it encourages stagnation in a world where market conditions are always shifting. This rigidity makes it difficult for businesses to evolve their messaging in response to new competitors, technological advances, or changing customer expectations.

A Smarter Approach to Positioning—One That Will Stay With Me Forever

A more effective framework for deliberate positioning includes these five steps:

1. Let Go of Your Origin Story

Many companies remain stuck in the market category they started with, even when it no longer serves them. The key is to step back and ask: What value are we actually delivering today? The answer to this question is often different from what the company initially set out to build, and that’s okay. The market dictates the most valuable use cases, and the best companies adapt accordingly.

2. Identify Your Unique Strengths

What makes your offering different from every competitor? This could be a feature, a business model, a process, or a proprietary technology. The goal is to list everything that differentiates your product, even before considering how customers perceive that uniqueness. Sometimes, the most valuable differentiator isn’t a flashy feature but an aspect of your service, such as ease of implementation, customer support, or integration capabilities.

3. Translate Strengths into Value

Customers don’t buy features—they buy outcomes. Instead of just listing unique capabilities, frame them in terms of the benefits they provide. A feature like “automated data tagging” is only valuable if it leads to “faster fraud detection for financial institutions.” The more directly you can connect your product’s strengths to a high-priority need for your customers, the stronger your positioning will be.

4. Find the Audience That Cares the Most

Not all potential customers will value your strengths equally. By focusing on the segment that finds your product indispensable, you maximize efficiency in marketing and sales. This approach is particularly critical for startups with limited resources. Rather than trying to appeal to everyone, hone in on the subset of customers who will immediately recognize your product’s value and become your strongest advocates. In her own words,

“Your target market is the customers who buy quickly, rarely ask for discounts and tell their friends about your offerings.”

5. Choose a Market Frame That Highlights Your Strengths

Your chosen market category shapes how customers perceive your product. Picking the wrong category—such as a high-performance database instead of a Business Intelligence tool—can obscure your competitive advantage. The right framing ensures that your differentiators stand out instead of blending in. Customers instinctively compare new products to what they already know, so giving them a frame of reference that highlights your strengths makes it easier for them to grasp why your product matters.

6. The Role of Trends in Positioning

Placing a product within an established market category helps customers quickly understand what it is and whether it’s relevant to them. But beyond categories, trends provide additional context that can make a product feel urgent and necessary.

It’s easy to confuse trends with market categories, but they serve different purposes. While market categories group similar products together, trends highlight emerging characteristics or shifts in behavior. Trends help customers understand why a product is important right now. For businesses, aligning with relevant trends can make a product seem more strategic, timely, and aligned with broader industry movements.

Trends also tap into our natural fear of missing out. Customers—especially business buyers—don’t want to be left behind when an industry shift happens. They actively seek out new, disruptive technologies and approaches to stay ahead. Positioning a product within the context of a trend can make it feel like an essential, forward-thinking investment rather than just another option in an established category.

The Power of Positioning Done Right

She emphasizes that positioning isn’t a one-time task but an ongoing process that evolves alongside the market and the product itself. As markets evolve, companies must reassess their positioning to ensure they’re putting their best foot forward. By focusing on deliberate positioning that aligns strengths with customer needs, businesses can escape the “default” category trap and create an unfair competitive advantage.

Without strong positioning, even a fantastic product can struggle to gain traction. But with a well-defined positioning strategy, companies can ensure that their product stands out, resonates with the right audience, and ultimately drives meaningful growth.