Marketing
by April Dunford
Why don't customers get it?
Plenty of good products stall because buyers can't tell what they are, who they're for or why they beat the options. April Dunford ran marketing at tech startups for years before becoming a consultant. She argues that most companies never choose their positioning. It happens to them by accident.
Hear a sample · read by Laura
Customers judge a product by what they think it is. Call it one thing and they compare it with the leader in that market, and find it lacking. Frame it another way and the same features look like strengths. Dunford's point is that positioning sets that frame.
Dunford breaks positioning into five parts and works through them in order. The alternatives customers would use instead. What you have that they don't. The value those differences give customers. The people who care most about that value. And the market category that makes all of it obvious.
Ask what customers would do if your product vanished. Often the answer is a spreadsheet, an extra hire or putting up with the problem. Dunford calls these the competitive alternatives. Your strengths only mean something when set against what customers would really use instead.
Dunford begins with the customers who love the product, the ones who bought quickly, use it most and tell others. Their reasons show what the product is best at. Positioning built around lukewarm customers comes out vague, because they don't value anything in particular.
The category you claim tells buyers who you compete with. Dunford describes three styles. Take on the leaders head to head, be a big fish in a small pond by owning one slice of a market, or create a new category, which is the slowest and costliest.
Context
Customers judge a product by what they compare it to. Choose that frame on purpose.
Happy customers
Start with the customers who already love your product, and work out what they see in it.
Real rivals
Your real competition is whatever buyers would do without you, which is often a spreadsheet or nothing at all.
What's different
List what you have that the alternatives lack, then ask what each one does for the buyer.
Best-fit buyers
Aim at the customers who care most about that value, even if they are a small group.
One thing to try
Ask three of your happiest customers what they'd use if your product disappeared tomorrow. Write down their answers word for word. That's your real competition. Whatever you do that it can't is where your positioning starts.
Knotd has the key ideas from 250+ non-fiction books, each in a few minutes, in plain words. Obviously Awesome comes with a Your Move story to make it stick.
Get the whole book on KnotdOpen in the appWhy don't customers get it? Plenty of good products stall because buyers can't tell what they are, who they're for or why they beat the options. April Dunford ran marketing at tech startups for years before becoming a consultant. She argues that most companies never choose their positioning. It happens to them by accident.
Same product, different frame; Five parts, in order; Your real competitor; Start with the fans; Pick a pond you can win.
Ask three of your happiest customers what they'd use if your product disappeared tomorrow. Write down their answers word for word. That's your real competition. Whatever you do that it can't is where your positioning starts.
Yes. Knotd has the key ideas from Obviously Awesome in a few minutes, in plain words, plus a Your Move story to test them. It's one of 250+ non-fiction books in the app.
