What product positioning actually is (and why most companies get it wrong)
Most B2B SaaS companies have a messaging problem that they mistake for a marketing problem. They produce more content, run more ads, and add more sections to their website, and nothing improves. The underlying issue is usually simpler: customers do not have a clear understanding of what the product does, who it is for, or why it is the right choice over the alternatives.
That is a positioning problem, and no amount of copywriting fixes it.
What positioning actually is
Positioning is how your product earns a specific place in the mind of a specific customer. It answers 3 questions: what does it do, for whom, and why is it the better option compared to what they would otherwise use.
Strong positioning does not happen in a tagline. It lives in a document that describes your competitive alternatives, your unique attributes, the value those attributes create, and the customer who cares most about that value. Once that document exists, everything downstream from the website to the sales pitch has something real to anchor to.
Without it, each team builds its own version of the story, and customers end up with a fragmented picture of what you actually are.
2 frameworks worth knowing
The 2 approaches I find most useful are April Dunford's positioning methodology and Andy Raskin's strategic narrative framework. They are not competing; they address different layers of the same challenge.
Dunford's approach focuses on competitive clarity. It walks you through a set of specific questions: what would customers use if you did not exist, what do you have that others do not, what value does that create, and who cares most about that value. The output is a positioning foundation that is specific enough to be useful and testable enough to be refined over time. It is best suited for companies that need to clarify their differentiation in a crowded space.
Raskin's approach focuses on narrative. It builds a story around a shift in the world, the problem that shift creates, the better future your product enables, and why your company is the right guide for that journey. It works best for companies that need to articulate not just what they do but why the moment they are responding to matters.
For most product marketing work, both are useful: Dunford's framework to build the foundation, and Raskin's approach to turn that foundation into a story that moves people.
When to rethink your positioning
Positioning is not a one-time exercise. A few signals suggest it is time to revisit yours.
- If customers struggle to explain why they use your product, or articulate its value to a colleague, the positioning is not doing its job.
- If your product offering has expanded significantly, the original positioning likely no longer covers what you actually are.
- If you have pivoted, a reset is usually necessary.
- If competitors are starting to sound exactly like you, differentiation has eroded and needs to be rebuilt.
The right cadence for revisiting positioning depends on how fast the product and market are moving. In a high-velocity environment, once a year is a minimum. After major product launches or strategic shifts, it is worth reassessing sooner.
Positioning, messaging, branding, and strategic narrative
These 4 concepts get conflated often enough that it is worth separating them clearly.
Positioning defines where your product fits in the market and why it is the right choice for a specific audience. Messaging translates that positioning into the specific words used in marketing and sales. Branding shapes how the company is perceived emotionally and visually. Strategic narrative is the larger story about why the company exists and what shift in the world it is responding to.
Positioning is the foundation. Messaging is how you communicate it. Branding is how you package it. Strategic narrative is the context that makes it meaningful. Getting them in that order matters, because each layer depends on the one beneath it.
What this means in practice
Get positioning right before you write a word of copy. Messaging is how you express positioning, not a substitute for it. Skipping the foundation means your best copy will bring in the wrong people and confuse the right ones.
Do not let branding substitute for positioning. A strong visual identity and a memorable tagline are valuable, but they do not tell customers what the product does or why it is right for them. Nail the positioning first, then let branding amplify it.
Use the strategic narrative to align your team. When everyone understands the shift in the market that your company is responding to, they become more effective communicators regardless of their function. A salesperson who understands the narrative closes differently than one who is working from a feature list.
Positioning is the lens through which everything else is built. As a leader, that lens is yours to define and keep sharp as the company changes around it.