What is Positioning?

Most founders make the mistake of thinking they are building a product. In reality, you are building a perception.

Positioning is the specific slice of mental real estate you own in the mind of your prospect. It is the answer to the question of where you fit in the daily life of your customer and how you relate to the other options available to them.

It is not a tagline. It is not a logo. It is a strategic stance.

At its most basic level, positioning is how you distinguish your offering from competitors. It anchors your business to a specific concept or value proposition.

Consider the automobile industry. Volvo owns safety. Ferrari owns speed. Toyota owns reliability.

When a customer has a specific problem, they should immediately think of your company as the solution to that specific problem. If they do not, your positioning is weak.

For a startup, this is critical because you do not have the resources to battle on every front. You must choose a narrow field of battle where you can win.

These two terms are often used interchangeably, but they are distinct concepts that serve different functions in your business.

• Positioning is internal strategy. It is the logic and the reasoning. It defines the inputs.
• Branding is external execution. It is the emotional expression. It creates the outputs.

Positioning is the skeleton that holds the body up. Branding is the skin and clothes that people see. You can have beautiful branding, but if the underlying positioning is fractured, the business will collapse under its own weight.

Your positioning statement serves as the filter for your branding efforts. If a marketing campaign does not reinforce the position you are trying to own, it is a waste of money.

To position a startup effectively, you generally have to look for a gap in the market. You are looking for an axis where the incumbents are weak or ignoring the customer entirely.

Common axes include:

• Price: Are you the luxury option or the budget option?
• Accessibility: Is your product exclusive or for the masses?
• Complexity: Do you offer a power-user tool or a simple, one-click solution?
• Audience: Are you for enterprise corporations or solopreneurs?

The goal is to plot your competitors on a graph and find the empty space. That empty space is your opportunity.

The hardest part of positioning is the sacrifice. To mean something to someone, you have to mean nothing to everyone else.

This is terrifying for new founders. You want to sell to everyone. You worry that by defining your position too narrowly, you are leaving money on the table.

The opposite is usually true. When you try to be everything, you become a commodity. When you specialize, you become a resource.

We have to ask ourselves difficult questions. Who are we willing to alienate? What revenue are we willing to turn down to maintain our focus? If we cannot answer those questions, we do not have a position yet.