Positioning

Positioning

Decide what you are, who it's for, what they'd use instead, and why you're the better choice, in words a buyer understands in five seconds. The method follows the public April Dunford school: start from the competitive alternatives buyers actually consider, and build out from there.

When to use it

• The homepage doesn't explain what you do, or demos start with "so what is it exactly?".
• You're choosing between going broad and niching down.
• A new product, a new segment, or a competitor that moved.

Don't use it for taglines, value props or a full messaging library (/messaging, which runs after this), or for research you haven't done yet.

Inputs

Required: company name, a short description and the website URL.

Recommended: context/icp/, context/competitors/, context/win-loss/ and context/expert-pov/. Positioning without ICP and competitor evidence is opinion. If those are missing, say so, run what you can, and offer /icp-research and /competitor-research first.

Paths. Write to context/positioning/MMYY-positioning.md. Agency or consultant? Swap context/ for clients/<client>/context/ throughout.

Steps

1. Read the current state. Fetch the homepage, pricing and about pages. Run the five-second test: do the headline and sub-headline say what it is and who it's for? Note the category, differentiation and ICP the site claims today.

2. Map the alternatives. What would a buyer do if you didn't exist?

   • do it manually
   • keep a legacy tool
   • buy a direct competitor
   • stretch an adjacent tool
   • do nothing
   • build it with a general AI assistant

   Rank them by how often they show up in deals.

3. Map the anchors. What could the positioning hang on?

   • an activity
   • a product category
   • a use case
   • a problem
   • a persona
   • a competitive alternative ("the X alternative for Y")

   Score the promising combinations on clarity, differentiation and relevance to the ICP.

4. Make the binary choice. Category-led (buyers already know the category and you win inside it) or problem-led (the category is new, crowded or wrong, so you lead with the pain). Use an activity anchor only when no software category fits.

5. Lay out the options. Take the top 2 to 4 combinations (3 by default) and work each one up:

   • primary and secondary anchor
   • a hero headline and sub-headline
   • the value in three parts: category, problem, differentiation
   • who it's for
   • the bet it makes
   • the risks

   Each option must change the anchor or the binary choice. No rewording of the same bet.

6. Build the comparison canvas. One column per option, rows for clarity, differentiation, ICP relevance, proof available, competitive exposure and risk. Mark each cell's confidence: verified, inferred, estimated or unknown. Recommend one and name the trade-off each option forces. The user decides.

7. Lock the chosen option. Up to three differentiators, each one a thing you'd guarantee with money on the line (pass, partial or fail). Name the primary competitive alternative and the market focus, with simple TAM maths (average deal size × customers needed).

8. Run the clarity ladder. Compress the position to one word, one phrase, one sentence and one paragraph. If a level fails, go back to the anchors.

9. Write the positioning statement in the form that fits the anchor:

   • Use case: "We help [persona] [do the job] without [friction], by [approach]."
   • Category: "We are a [category] that [differentiator], unlike [alternative] which [weakness]."
   • Alternative: "We're the [leader] alternative that [upgrade], for [persona] who [unmet need]."
   • Activity: "We help [persona] [do activity], replacing [manual process] with [mechanism]."

10. Map the implications. What changes for messaging, for the ICP, and which channel leads with which facet (homepage: primary anchor; comparison pages: the alternative; case studies: proof that matches the anchor).

11. Hand off to /messaging.

Output shape

Open with a TLDR (the one-sentence position) and one block of open decisions. Then: current state, alternatives, the options with the canvas, the committed position (anchors, differentiators with guarantee verdicts, statement, clarity ladder), implications, and sources. Each caveat is stated once.

What good looks like

• A stranger reads the hero and knows what it is and who it's for in five seconds.
• No more than three differentiators, each one provable.
• The comparison set matches the buyer. Compare to other vendors only when buyers already use the category.
• The options are real choices, not three phrasings of one idea.
• The TAM maths is realistic, not hopeful.

Mistakes to avoid

• "The platform for X" with nothing else.
• "AI-powered" as the main differentiator.
• Inventing a category nobody searches for.
• Choosing the position before mapping the alternatives.
• Differentiators you couldn't prove to a sceptical buyer.

Chain

Part of the free five-skill chain: /icp-research → /competitor-research → /tov-guidelines → positioning → /messaging. The other six context skills (company context, win-loss, founder POV, brand kit, funnel and goals) are in the paid context plugin ($19.99, link in the README).