Positioning defines the context in which buyers judge your product, so they quickly see why it is the best choice for them.
Key points
- The concept was popularized by Al Ries and Jack Trout, first in 1969 and 1972 trade articles and then in the 1981 book Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind [1].
- April Dunford's framework breaks positioning into competitive alternatives, unique attributes, value, target customers and market category [2].
- Competitive alternatives include the status quo, such as spreadsheets or doing nothing, not just rival products [2][3].
- Positioning comes before messaging: the Value Proposition, Email Copywriting and subject lines all express it.
- Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm, the source of a widely used positioning statement template (for target customer, who has a need, our product is a category that provides a benefit), argues for winning one niche as its clear leader [4].
What positioning is
Positioning is about context. Buyers compare every product to something, and positioning decides what that something is. Ries and Trout described it as finding a window in the buyer's mind, arguing that people discard information that does not fit an existing slot [1]. For B2B software, the practical version comes from April Dunford: start from the alternatives customers would use if your product did not exist, identify what you can do that they cannot, translate those attributes into value, and then name the buyers who care most about that value [2]. Only then choose a market category that makes the value obvious. Good positioning makes a product feel like the natural answer for a specific Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), even if it would look ordinary to everyone else.
Positioning and the competitive landscape
Positioning is always relative, so it depends on a clear view of the Competitive Landscape. HubSpot's guide to competitive analysis recommends mapping competitors' products, pricing, messaging and customer reviews to find gaps [3]. Dunford adds that the most important competitor is often the status quo: a manual process, an internal tool or simply not solving the problem [2]. A startup rarely wins by claiming to be better at everything. It wins by picking a segment where its unique strengths matter most, which is why positioning and the choice of Beachhead Market go together. Moore's work on technology adoption makes the same point: mainstream buyers want a product positioned as the clear leader in a narrow category they understand [4].
Putting positioning to work in outreach
Positioning shows up most clearly in first-touch outreach, where the reader decides in seconds whether a message is relevant. A Cold Email built on strong positioning names the reader's situation, references the alternative they are probably using, and offers one specific reason to consider a change. That is much easier when the Buyer Persona and Pain Point are well defined. Weak positioning tends to produce generic feature lists that read like every other pitch. Teams can test positioning cheaply by sending differently framed emails to the same segment and comparing Positive Reply Rate, using A/B Testing with enough volume to trust the result. Replies and objections then feed back into the positioning itself, which should be revisited as the market and product change [2].
Related terms
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