Positioning isn’t what you say. It’s what lands.
Most people think positioning is a messaging problem.
It’s not.
Messaging is just the delivery. Positioning is the outcome—what someone believes about you when they’re done evaluating.
That gap between intent and perception is where most products stall.
Here’s a cleaner way to think about it.
1. Decide where you want to exist in the buyer’s mind
This is your desired positioning.
Not a slogan. Not a value prop doc.
A sharp decision about:
what category you want to be compared in
what you want to be known for
who should immediately self-exclude
If you can’t describe this in one sentence, everything downstream gets noisy.
2. Design a strategy to move perception
Desired positioning doesn’t magically become reality.
Your market already has a perceived positioning for you—even if it’s vague or wrong.
Strategy is simply the bridge between:
what you want to be
what they currently think you are
This is where trade-offs live. You can’t win every comparison.
3. Turn positioning into messages people can process
Positioning is abstract. Messaging makes it usable.
“Why this instead of what I’m using now?”
“When does this not make sense?”
“What pain does this remove specifically?”
If your messaging avoids exclusion, it’s not doing its job.
4. Ship the same message everywhere it matters
Consistency beats creativity here.
Your site, onboarding, docs, demos, posts, emails—if they don’t reinforce the same idea, the market won’t connect the dots.
Different formats are fine. Different stories are not.
5. Repeat until it feels boring to you
Repetition is how positioning sticks.
It feels redundant internally long before it’s clear externally.
If you’re tired of saying it, you’re probably just getting started.
6. Watch perception move (or not)
The signal you’re looking for isn’t likes or traffic.
It’s:
prospects saying “this seems built for us”
leads disqualifying themselves early
comparisons getting shorter, not longer
That’s perceived positioning shifting.
Final thought
Treating positioning as a one-time task is why most of it fails.
Decide → express → distribute → repeat → observe → adjust.
Most teams start with messaging and hope clarity shows up later.
It doesn’t. Clarity comes from deciding what you want to own—and what you’re fine losing.
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