Obviously Awesome

Imagine launching a revolutionary product that customers love once they understand it, but struggle to explain what it actually does. This scenario plays out daily in boardrooms and startup offices worldwide, where brilliant innovations fail not because they lack merit, but because they suffer from a positioning problem that renders them invisible or incomprehensible to their target market. The challenge becomes even more acute in our information-saturated world, where customers encounter thousands of products daily and make split-second decisions about what deserves their attention.

The art and science of product positioning represents one of the most critical yet misunderstood disciplines in business strategy. Unlike traditional marketing tactics that focus on channels and campaigns, positioning operates at a deeper level, functioning as the foundation upon which all other business activities rest. It determines how customers categorize your offering, what alternatives they compare it against, and ultimately whether they perceive it as obviously valuable or utterly irrelevant. This systematic approach to positioning reveals that successful products rarely achieve market clarity by accident, but rather through deliberate strategic choices that align their unique strengths with customer needs and market dynamics in ways that make their value immediately apparent to the right audience.

Positioning functions as a form of context setting that enables customers to quickly understand and evaluate new products within their existing mental frameworks. Just as moviegoers rely on opening scenes to establish genre, setting, and tone, potential customers depend on contextual clues to categorize unfamiliar offerings and determine their relevance. This context-setting process happens automatically and instantaneously, as human brains constantly seek to organize new information using existing knowledge structures and pattern recognition.

The power of context becomes evident when examining how identical products can be perceived entirely differently based on their surrounding circumstances. A world-class violinist performing in a concert hall commands premium pricing and rapt attention, while the same musician playing identical music in a subway station barely registers with passersby. The music itself remains unchanged, but the context transforms everything about how audiences interpret its value and significance. This phenomenon extends directly to commercial products, where features and capabilities that seem revolutionary in one context may appear mundane or irrelevant in another.

Successful positioning requires recognizing that customers encounter products not as blank slates, but as individuals carrying existing assumptions, preferences, and mental models about how different categories of solutions work. When customers see a new database product, they immediately activate their existing knowledge about databases, including expected features, typical pricing models, and standard competitors. If the product doesn't align with these expectations, customers experience cognitive dissonance that often results in dismissal rather than deeper investigation. Smart positioning anticipates these mental shortcuts and guides customers toward frameworks that highlight rather than obscure the product's distinctive value.

The positioning process becomes particularly crucial for innovative products that blur traditional category boundaries or introduce entirely new capabilities. These offerings face the double challenge of educating customers about unfamiliar functionality while simultaneously convincing them of its importance. Without clear positioning, even groundbreaking innovations can be misunderstood as inferior versions of familiar products, or worse, ignored entirely as solutions to problems customers don't realize they have. The key lies in selecting contextual frames that make the product's advantages obvious and compelling to the specific customer segments most likely to value them.

Effective positioning consists of five interconnected components that work together to create a coherent and compelling market position. These elements form a logical chain where each component builds upon and reinforces the others, creating a unified narrative that helps customers understand what the product is, why it matters, and who should care about it. The framework provides structure for the complex positioning process while ensuring that all critical elements receive appropriate attention and alignment.

Competitive alternatives represent the starting point for positioning analysis, encompassing everything customers might use or do if the product didn't exist. This category extends far beyond direct product competitors to include manual processes, general-purpose tools, or simply accepting the status quo. Understanding true competitive alternatives requires seeing the market through customer eyes rather than industry expert perspectives, as customers often evaluate solutions differently than vendors expect. A sophisticated database product might compete not against other databases, but against spreadsheets and manual reporting processes that customers actually use today.

Unique attributes identify the specific capabilities, features, or characteristics that distinguish the offering from these competitive alternatives. These differentiators must be objective and provable rather than subjective claims about quality or service excellence. Patents, proprietary technology, specialized expertise, unique partnerships, or distinctive delivery models can all serve as unique attributes, provided they genuinely set the product apart in ways customers can verify and understand.

Value represents the concrete benefits that unique attributes deliver to customers, expressed in terms of specific goals or outcomes rather than abstract improvements. While features enable benefits, value connects those benefits to customer priorities in measurable ways. A patented algorithm becomes valuable not because it's proprietary, but because it enables customers to get answers from their data in minutes rather than hours, thereby improving their ability to serve their own customers more effectively.

Target market characteristics define the specific customer segments that care most intensely about the delivered value. Rather than broad demographic categories, effective segmentation identifies the particular situations, needs, or contexts that make certain customers much more likely to recognize and pay for the offering's distinctive benefits. These best-fit customers buy quickly, pay full price, refer others, and stick around long-term because the product solves problems they care deeply about solving.

Market category selection provides the frame of reference that helps customers understand the product's role and evaluate it against appropriate alternatives. The chosen category triggers powerful assumptions about competitors, features, pricing, and purchase criteria that can either support or undermine the positioning strategy. A well-chosen category makes the product's strengths central to evaluation criteria, while a poor category choice forces constant battles against unhelpful assumptions and comparisons.

The systematic positioning process begins with identifying and analyzing best-fit customers who already love the product. These customers understood the offering quickly, bought without extensive convincing, and became enthusiastic advocates who refer others and provide positive references. Rather than examining all customers equally, this focused approach reveals patterns in who finds the product most valuable and why, providing crucial insights that inform all subsequent positioning decisions.

Team formation and vocabulary alignment ensure that key stakeholders share common understanding of positioning concepts and commit to exploring alternatives beyond current assumptions. This step requires deliberately setting aside historical positioning baggage and preconceived notions about markets and competitors. Founders and long-term employees often carry strong opinions about the product's intended market that may no longer serve the business effectively, making this mental reset crucial for objective analysis.

Competitive alternative analysis maps what best-fit customers would actually use or do if the product disappeared tomorrow. This exercise frequently reveals surprising insights about customer behavior and market dynamics, as real alternatives often differ significantly from obvious industry competitors. Understanding these true alternatives provides the foundation for identifying meaningful differentiation and unique value propositions that resonate with customer decision-making processes.

The framework then systematically works through isolating unique attributes, mapping them to customer value, and identifying characteristics that make certain customers care intensely about that value. Market category selection follows logically from this analysis, choosing the frame of reference that puts the product's strengths at the center of evaluation criteria. Optional trend alignment can add contemporary relevance without overwhelming the core positioning message.

Throughout this process, the framework emphasizes customer perspective over internal assumptions, provable differentiation over subjective claims, and focused targeting over broad market appeals. The sequential nature ensures that each decision builds logically on previous analysis, while the team-based approach creates organizational alignment and buy-in essential for successful implementation across all business functions.

Market positioning strategies fall into three distinct styles, each suited to different competitive situations and business objectives. The Head to Head approach positions products to win entire existing markets by directly challenging established leaders using current evaluation criteria and market definitions. This aggressive strategy works best when companies possess clear competitive advantages and sufficient resources to battle entrenched competitors, or when entering established categories that lack dominant leaders.

The Big Fish, Small Pond strategy targets specific subsegments within larger markets, carving out defensible niches where different rules apply. Rather than competing broadly against category leaders, this approach identifies customer groups with specialized needs inadequately served by general-purpose solutions. Success depends on finding subsegments large enough to meet business objectives while possessing distinctive requirements that justify choosing a specialized provider over the safer option of market leaders.

Create a New Game represents the most ambitious positioning style, attempting to establish entirely new market categories that highlight the product's unique strengths. This approach requires convincing customers that new problems exist and deserve attention, then defining evaluation criteria that favor the category creator's distinctive capabilities. While potentially offering the greatest rewards through market leadership in custom-designed categories, this strategy demands substantial resources and patience to educate markets and establish category legitimacy.

Each positioning style involves different risks and opportunities that must align with company resources, market conditions, and business objectives. Head to Head positioning benefits from customer familiarity with market categories but requires competing against well-funded incumbents with established customer bases. Subsegment strategies offer more defensible positions but limit addressable market size, at least initially. Category creation provides maximum positioning control but demands significant investment in market education with uncertain timelines for customer adoption.

The choice between positioning styles should reflect honest assessment of competitive advantages, available resources, and market dynamics rather than wishful thinking about desired market positions. Companies can evolve their positioning style over time, perhaps starting with focused subsegments before expanding to broader markets or eventually creating new categories as they build resources and market credibility.

Translating positioning into actionable business strategy requires systematic implementation across all customer-facing functions and ongoing management as market conditions evolve. The process begins with developing a compelling sales story that embodies the new positioning in customer conversations. This narrative arc starts with problem definition, describes current solution limitations, presents the ideal solution characteristics, and positions the product within the chosen market category while highlighting unique value propositions.

Messaging development follows the sales story foundation, creating consistent language that reinforces positioning across all marketing channels and materials. A master messaging document prevents positioning drift that often occurs when individual campaigns or materials build upon modified messages rather than returning to the agreed-upon foundation. This consistency ensures that customers encounter coherent positioning regardless of how they first discover or evaluate the product.

Product roadmap and pricing adjustments may be necessary to align offering characteristics with the chosen market position. Features that seemed important in the old positioning context might become less relevant, while previously overlooked capabilities gain strategic significance. Pricing expectations vary significantly across market categories, making alignment with category norms essential for credible positioning and competitive effectiveness.

Positioning requires regular review and adjustment as both products and markets evolve continuously. Competitive landscape changes, technological advances, regulatory shifts, economic conditions, and customer preference evolution can all weaken previously strong positions. Companies should formally assess positioning every six months or whenever significant market events occur, starting with competitive alternatives analysis to determine whether fundamental positioning assumptions remain valid.

Successful positioning implementation creates organizational alignment that extends far beyond marketing and sales to encompass product development, customer success, and strategic planning. When done effectively, positioning provides the foundation for all customer-related decisions, creating consistency and focus that makes every business function more effective. The goal is making positioning feel effortless and natural rather than forced or artificial, allowing the product's inherent strengths to shine through appropriate market context and customer communication.

Great positioning transforms ordinary products into obviously awesome solutions by deliberately choosing market contexts that highlight their unique strengths and connecting them with customers who care intensely about the value they deliver. This systematic approach to context setting enables companies to escape the trap of competing solely on price or features by creating defensible positions where their distinctive capabilities become central to customer decision-making processes.

The transformation from confused to compelling positioning requires moving beyond default market assumptions toward deliberate strategic choices about competitive alternatives, unique attributes, customer value, target segments, and market categories. When these elements align properly, positioning creates sustainable competitive advantages that make marketing more efficient, sales cycles shorter, and customer relationships stronger. This strategic foundation ultimately determines whether innovative products achieve their potential or remain hidden gems that only a few customers ever discover and appreciate.