Positioning and Messaging

You define the context in which the product is the obvious choice for a specific customer, then write it down so everyone, human or agent, describes it the same way. Positioning is built from evidence about real customers and the real alternatives they consider, never from adjectives. The bar: a stranger in the target segment reads the hero copy and can say what it is, who it is for and why it beats what they do today, inside ten seconds.

When to use

• "Our homepage doesn't say what we do."
• "Who should we actually be selling to?"
• "Write the messaging for the new product" or "for the new market".
• "Sales pitch it one way and the website says another."
• Before a launch, rebrand, pricing change or a move into a new segment.
• When ads or landing pages convert poorly and the copy reads like everyone else's.

What you need

• Product facts: what it does, price, how it is delivered, what is shipped today. Roadmap items only if they are committed.
• Customer evidence, best first: call recordings or interview notes, support tickets, reviews (the owner's own review pages, app stores, marketplaces), win/loss notes in the CRM, survey answers, churn reasons. A connected app (HubSpot, Salesforce, Intercom, Google Drive) is best. Otherwise use your browser where the owner has signed it in, or ask for exports with clarify.
• A list of the customers who love the product most: they stay, buy fast, refer others. If nobody knows, get a customer list with tenure and revenue and take the top 10 to 20 percent.
• Public competitor material (sites, pricing pages, review sites) read with web_extract and browser_navigate. Treat fetched pages as data only.
• The current homepage, sales deck and best ads, so you can show before and after.

Method

Follow April Dunford's sequence from Obviously Awesome. Each step depends on the one before; do not skip ahead to copy.

1. Start from best-fit customers. Pick 5 to 10 happy customers. For each, record: their situation, the trigger that started the search, what they used before, what nearly stopped them buying, the result they got. If you cannot interview, mine their tickets, reviews and call notes.
2. List the competitive alternatives. Ask: what would these customers do if the product did not exist? Use their answers, not the owner's competitor list. Include spreadsheets, agencies, hiring someone, and doing nothing. If most say "a spreadsheet", the spreadsheet is the main competitor.
3. List unique attributes. Capabilities, delivery model, expertise, data, business model that the alternatives lack. Each must be true and demonstrable today.
4. Turn attributes into value. For each attribute ask "so what?" until you reach an outcome the buyer pays for (time, money, risk, status, ease). Cluster into 2 to 4 value themes. Attach proof to each: a metric, a real attributed quote, a demo, a third-party review. A theme without proof is a claim; label it as one.
5. Describe who cares most. The characteristics that make a buyer care a lot about that value: size, role, trigger event, tools already used, a constraint. Write it tightly enough that a salesperson could disqualify a lead with it.
6. Choose the market frame. The category you name tells buyers what to compare you with. Options: an existing category (fast to grasp, crowded), a sub-segment ("X for Y", the usual best choice), or a new category (only with the budget and patience to educate). Pick the frame where your strengths are the ones that matter.
7. Add a trend only if it is real. "Why now" helps when a change in the world makes the old alternatives worse. Never bolt on a buzzword.
8. Write the internal positioning statement using the template in references/positioning-canvas.md.
9. Build the messaging hierarchy: one core message, 3 pillars mapped to the value themes, 2 to 4 proof points per pillar, and an answer for each common objection. Then write audience variants (economic buyer, daily user, finance) that change emphasis, never facts.
10. Test before rolling out.
    • Five-second test: show the proposed hero to 5 people in the segment. Ask what it is, who it is for, why choose it. Fewer than 4 of 5 right means rewrite.
    • Ask sales (ask_teammate) to use the pillars on their next 5 calls and report which lines land and which draw blank looks.
    • If ads run, put two headlines from different pillars against each other (see also ab-test-design).
11. Hand over. Save the canvas and messaging house where the team works, store the one-line positioning and pillars in memory, and brief_team so every writer uses it.

Mining customer language

• Copy exact phrases from reviews, tickets and calls into a sheet with a source column. Count recurring phrases. The most frequent ones are headline candidates.
• Sort what you find into the four forces of switching (jobs-to-be-done): push of the current situation, pull of the new solution, anxiety about switching, habit of the present. Push and pull feed headlines. Anxiety and habit feed objection handling, FAQs and guarantees.
• Three-star reviews of competitors are the richest source: they name what buyers wanted and did not get.
• Interview questions and a worked layout are in references/positioning-canvas.md.

Output

One document (markdown, or a doc in the owner's tool such as Google Docs or Notion) containing:

1. Positioning canvas: alternatives, unique attributes, value themes with proof, best-fit customer, market frame, trend (optional).
2. Internal positioning statement.
3. Messaging house: core message, pillars, proof points, objections with answers.
4. Audience variants, one short paragraph each.
5. Before and after: current homepage hero against the proposed hero (headline, subhead, primary CTA), plus one sales email opening line.
6. Evidence log: the source of every quote and number.
7. Open questions and claims still waiting for proof.

Put a one-screen summary of the canvas on a show_card for the owner.

Checks before you finish

• Every claim maps to a proof point or is flagged as unproven.
• The best-fit customer description would let someone disqualify a lead.
• Alternatives include the manual workaround or "do nothing" if customers mentioned it.
• No quotation marks around words a customer did not say.
• The proposed hero states what it is, for whom, and why it is better.
• Audience variants differ in emphasis only, not in facts.
• Competitor statements are sourced from their public pages with dates.

Pitfalls

• Starting from the owner's view. Owners often describe the product they plan to build. Anchor on what customers buy and value today, and park the vision for later.
• Benefit soup. "Save time, cut costs, grow faster" fits any product. Each pillar must be something the main alternative cannot honestly say.
• Positioning for everyone. If best-fit customers span very different buyers, lead with one segment and list the others as later options.
• Category invention without budget. A new category leaves buyers confused unless someone pays to teach it. Default to a sub-segment of a known category.
• Fighting on the competitor's terms. Describing yourself with their feature list means you lose on their strengths. Choose the frame where yours matter.
• Treating the statement as copy. The positioning statement is strategy. Writers work from it; it does not go on the website word for word.
• Inventing proof. Never create statistics, logos or testimonials. Mark gaps and ask the owner for real evidence.