This Is How To Nail Product Positioning So Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It With April Dunford Author Of Obviously Awesome [AMP 139]
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- Career Change: Fake it til you figure it out. How hard can it be?
- Do it right, and the company grows quickly, gets acquired; you get bored and do another startup
- Definition of Positioning: How to win at doing something that a well-defined market cares about
- Perfect marketing execution won’t save you from weak positioning; marketing execution and results are only as good as positioning that feeds into them
- Who should decide the positioning for your product? Everybody
- Siebel Story: Too small to buy out beyond a billion dollars
- Positioning Pitfalls: People don’t do positioning deliberately; and when they try to fix it, they don’t follow a process but wing it or write a “Positioning Statement”
- Positioning Statement Components:
- Who’s your competitive alternatives?
- What are the unique capabilities or features that your product has?
- What’s the value that those features can enable for customers?
- Who’s my target customer?
- Is this a market that I’m going to win?
- Signs of weak positioning include:
- How a customer reacts to your product/service
- They compare you to a non-competitor; not in the right market
- Customer knows what you do, but not the value or why they should care
Links:
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Quotes by April Dunford:
- “Not only is positioning a thing I should figure out, it's potentially a super powerful thing.”
- “Two years after graduating from engineering, I'm running this great big marketing team. It's global. I’ve got this giant budget...even though I was completely unqualified for it.”
- “I focus on positioning, mainly because I think people do a really terrible job at positioning. There's not many people that know how to do it right.”
- “A shift in positioning can totally result in a shift in the product roadmap, a shift in your pricing, a shift in a way you sell, a shift in your channels.”
- "You see signs of weak positioning across your entire sales marketing funnel, but often the place where it’s most obvious is looking at how a customer reacts when they first encounter your product or your offering."
How To Nail Product Positioning So Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It With @aprildunford Author Of Obviously Awesome
Click To TweetTranscript:
Eric: I don't think it's too bold of a statement to make that how you position your product or service will either make or break your company. The marketing that we do and how we choose to present the benefits of the partner service, and to which particular target audience will define the success of your company. We all know how to do that, right? Hold up! That's the jukebox scratching. Our next guest says, "Hey, forget everything you thought you knew about product positioning." Successfully connecting your product with buyers is not a matter of following trends, or selling harder, or even trying to attract the widest customer base. Our next guest is April Dunford. She is the author of Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning So Customers Get It, Buy It, Love it. This book just dropped a couple of weeks ago. April is an expert in this field. She's launched over a dozen products. She worked for Siebel, for IBM, for Nortel, and she’s dropping tons of knowledge bombs in our session today talking about what are some of the biggest mistakes that startups, marketers, and entrepreneurs are making when it comes to product positioning. How do we identify? What are the common signs of really weak positioning? How do we remedy that and strengthening our position? She gives some fantastic examples to make it all tangible for you. It's a fantastic episode. My name is Eric Piela. I'm the host of the Actionable Marketing Podcast and the Brand and Buzz Manager here at CoSchedule. Buckle up, we’ve got another great AMP because it is time to get amped. Alright, welcome to another episode of the Actionable Marketing Podcast. This is a fun episode. I have April Dunford on our show today. She's the author of Obviously Awesome which she will talk about today. As I hear, it is launch day for the book. April: It's launch day. It's so exciting. Eric: Welcome to the show and congratulations! What a cool day for you. April: Thanks! It is a cool day actually. This has been a long road. It's really good to get this one across the finish line. I'm excited. Eric: Yes. Obviously, we're recording this today. It's launch time. It'll probably come out in a couple of weeks or so. April: We can still capture the moment though. Eric: Dang right. I am pumped for you because I went to this process of helping our CEO launch his book, so I know the energy and effort, and it all culminates today. Congrats and thanks again for taking the time to talk to our listeners. I’m pumped to introduce you to our listeners today. This is a big day. Obviously, you put a lot of passion into this book, and it sprang from, what I'm assuming is a large and illustrious career in marketing and product positioning. If you could, April, talk to us about how you ended up here. April: I'm going to start describing as that of myself, “A large and lustrous career. Let me describe it." You know what, my career has been a weird kind of a trip. I started out I wanted to be an engineer. I went into engineering, and I graduated with an engineering degree. When I was done, I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do, and I had debts. My friend worked at a startup. I got a job at a startup, the startup got acquired, my boss left. Two years after graduating from engineering, I'm running this great, big marketing team. It's global. I’ve got this giant budget. I decided, "This is my bag," even though I was completely unqualified for it.
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