In this week’s episode, Melissa Perri invites April Dunford, author of the best-selling book Obviously Awesome, How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It on the podcast. April has 25 years of experience leading marketing, product, and sales teams and now runs her consulting firm, helping companies of all shapes and sizes, including Google, IBM, Postman, and Epic Games, nail their positioning. 

Here are some key points April and Melissa talk about:

April talks about her academic and professional background and what led her to write her book on product positioning, Obviously Awesome.

According to April, product positioning is how your product is the best in the world at delivering some value that a well-defined set of target customers cares about. “Positioning is really about taking a customer that doesn't know too much about our [product] and orienting them towards it,” she tells Melissa.

April describes an example of good positioning that a company can execute and how to assess if your product’s positioning is weak or strong.

One of the key concepts in product positioning is looking at your product from the perspective of the consumer to determine what makes your product unique.

It is best to build your product according to a positioning thesis based on information about your competitors and consumers. However, the thesis is usually wrong, so use your initial launch to improve it.

The essence of product marketing is product positioning.

Producing positioning can only succeed when the market managers work harmoniously with the product managers and sales team, to truly understand the products' place in the market.

If we don't have an actionable segmentation, it doesn't matter if we have product market fit. 

April shares her expertise on what product teams and marketing teams should be doing to truly understand and leverage their product positioning.

Resources

April Dunford on the web | Twitter