One of the biggest mistakes product marketers can make is to base their positioning on their own assumptions, opinions, or preferences, rather than on the actual needs, pain points, and desires of their customers. Customer research is essential to understand how your product or feature solves a specific problem, what benefits it delivers, and how it compares to other alternatives in the market. Without customer research, you risk creating a positioning that is irrelevant, inaccurate, or unappealing to your target audience.
"Outside in" thinking is key to positioning any product. What you or your boss thinks is irrelevant. What matters is what your target audience thinks. The equation is relatively simple - three questions to answer in positioning a product: 1. Who is the target audience? 2. What is their frame of reference? 3. What is your point of difference?
The starting point is not to simply capture the voice of the customer through a couple of rounds of primary research, but to begin the exercise with empathy. Placing yourself and/or your team in the shoes of the customer is essential. Building an empathetic muscle around the discovery process of identifying the first-person pain points of your customer will enable a Product Marketing professional to have a heightened opportunity to effectively position a new product offering that will result in a high adoption rate and also achieve a deeper share of wallet in the respective category. Empathy will also enable a team to build more referenceable and reliable buyer personas reflecting the diligence of your research.
Another common mistake product marketers can make is to use vague, generic, or jargon-filled language to describe their product or feature, which can dilute its value proposition and make it hard for customers to grasp its uniqueness and relevance. Instead of using broad or abstract terms, product marketers should use specific and clear language that conveys the core functionality, benefit, and differentiation of their product or feature. For example, instead of saying "our product helps you optimize your workflow", you could say "our product automates repetitive tasks and saves you hours of manual work".
Successful branding requires a simple message delivered consistently and repetitively. You may spend hours or even days refining your copy, but the reality is that advertising is like a gentle fog that envelopes your audience over time. You must be clear, concise, consistent and relentless in speaking to your audience, over and over and over again. Complicated jargon is the antithesis of successful brand and product messaging.
Being clear and concise takes effort. Take the time review your messages. Many times people skim and if your value proposition is not immediately clear they move on.
A third common mistake product marketers can make is to ignore or downplay the competition, which can make their product or feature seem less credible or compelling. Customers are always comparing different options and looking for the best solution for their needs, so product marketers need to acknowledge and address the competitive landscape and show how their product or feature stands out from the rest. This does not mean bashing or copying the competition, but rather highlighting the unique value and advantages of your product or feature.
Category leaders position themselves against the market opportunity to create and/or build the category keeping the growth for themselves. Followers position themselves against the competition in an attempt to take share. Classic marketing strategies.
In the brain change = threat so your most difficult competitor is often Status Quo bias (do nothing). Risk/loss aversion is typically a better motivation than benefit gain to overcome Status Quo bias.
A fairly common tool, that technology product marketing and sales enablement professionals are employing to effectively address competition is the battle card. This internal collateral can be used to assertively pre-empt gaps or points of differentiation that have already been identified when evaluating a product against the competitive landscape. It can empower field sales professionals to easily overcome competitive objections and when built with clarity and fidelity, can make heroes out of product marketing pros!
A fourth common mistake product marketers can make is to stick to one positioning statement or message without testing or iterating it based on feedback and results. Positioning is not a one-time activity, but a continuous process that requires constant validation and refinement. Product marketers should test their positioning with different segments, channels, and formats, and measure its impact on key metrics such as awareness, engagement, conversion, and retention. Based on the data and insights, product marketers should adjust and optimize their positioning accordingly.
This may seem obvious, but worth the call-out, it is important to take note of where you are testing your positioning. Do not fall prey to relying on internal validation. You MUST take the positioning collateral to the boulevards of corporate America or wherever your customers and prospects operate. Tradeshows, online industry-related communities such as here on Linkedin, customer advisory councils and elsewhere are credible forums for testing your positioning statements. Then this may also be obvious to state that one must learn from the outcomes of your tests, then refine, and iterate on the positioning, it should be a continuous process that improves your effectiveness and drives the KPIs established.
Successful marketing requires listening to your audience, creating your product and message, putting it into the marketplace, tracking and understanding the feedback you can receive from the market if you are listening and asking the right questions, refining the product/message and doing it all over again. Marketing is a never ending iteration of this process. Standing still is a death sentence. Just ask AOL, Blockbuster or Myspace.
Product marketers can avoid common mistakes and create a powerful and effective positioning for their new product or feature by using proven product positioning frameworks. The Value Proposition Canvas helps map out customer profiles and value propositions, as well as identify the fit between them. The Positioning Statement helps craft a concise and compelling statement that summarizes the target market, category, benefit, and differentiation of a product or feature. The Jobs to Be Done framework focuses on motivations and outcomes that drive customers to use a product or feature, rather than the features or functions themselves. By utilizing these frameworks, product marketers can craft a positioning that resonates with customers and differentiates them from the competition.
There are probably a myriad of frameworks that may help you in the positioning process. In the end it comes down to this: 1. The marketplace/consumer drives positioning 2. Positioning drives strategy 3. Strategy drives execution The secret to being a great marketer is not having all the answers. It is a matter of knowing what questions to ask and of whom to ask them.
Mistake 5: Not talking to your Sales Team Sales teams often have nuggets of customer requests, recommendations and pain points in their exchanges. Even support requests can help discern where customers are struggling. Not being part of sales conversations with customers, not interacting regularly can mean missing out on invaluable insights. Keeping a running dialog with sales can be that crucial step you need, when it comes to determining the right need and fit in the market.
Communicating features and not benefits - think and talk about what the customer understands and values not how technically superior your product / service is. Who remembers Steve Jobs saying this iPod can store a 1000 songs and not it has 1 GB (or whatever) storage memory? And playback time in minutes and hours and not the battery size in mAH.
The Product manager has to address the concerns of internal stakeholders and get their buy-in. This can ensure that all customer touchpoints convey the same value proposition.
Mistake 3B: Don't understand who your competitors are Marketers need to consider not only how their target audience solves the problem their solution addresses with other competitors' products, but also DIY solutions and the possibility that they don't solve the problem at all. In both cases, it is crucial to show how your solution is better than their current solution or no solution at all.