I am frequently asked about how we handle positioning where we have multiple products, serving multiple market segments, and being bought by a range of different personas.
words to live/position by "The simpler we can keep our positioning, the stronger it will be and the easier it will be for the team to make it real in the market."
Was that useful? Yes, good reminders and pointers. Thanks.
Too long for a newsletter? No. As long as the content properly adds value (as this post does), then length is never a problem. I've bought and read both of your books, and their lengths were not a problem either!
How about those diagrams? They are good too. If you provide multiple representations of the same info, you have more chance of making your point hit home. Please keep including diagrams, then.
Thanks for your clear thinking and clear messages. I only discovered you a few weeks ago, and I'll keep on seeking out your reminders.
Thanks April! My team have listened to your audio book, watched your talks on microconf, listened to your podcast on Lenny's newsletter and bought your latest book.
This article was obviously awesome and addresses some of the questions we've long had. I was wondering if you could share with us what are your thoughts on how we had interpreted some of your teachings:
We have one main company (Genesiv) which is basically community-building software for enterprise customers.
However, we apparently got traction early on for a special version of our software which included very niche-specific features for trading brokerage firms that include stuff that hardly any other enterprise customers used (eg. trading charts on APPLE, GOOGLE, etc). There are overlapping interests between this group (brokerage firms) and the other group (enterprise customers) such as community-building, analytics, etc. Just that the brokerage one has a big emphasis on having charts in their community (which is like a big add-on we have).
We struggled with creating a site that spoke to both groups so we ended up creating 2 sites (genesiv.com and rockqet.com) with the latter focusing entirely on brokerage firms. We were even thinking of having it as 2 separate companies with rockqet.com basically "leasing" the software from genesiv and adding on other brokerage related services that genesiv typically does not do (eg. webinars, investment research).
Was wondering if you could share some of your thoughts on this approach we arrived at. If it's too troublesome (as it's quite a long case study), that's okay too! Just wanted to let you know that your work has been amazing in helping us get a good understanding of positioning. It's practically a required reading for the team here haha.
I'm worried I don't have enough info to give you feedback on your situation and I wouldn't want to steer you wrong on this one. I think for you folks, from a marketing perspective, You could try to keep both products together until one roof, but as you have seen, it's tricky how you will handle this on the home page. The other question is whether or not there is value to anyone if you did position a company overtop of the two products. If there isn't then I think what you have done makes a lot of sense. (All that said - I probably don't know enough to give you any really good advice so take it for what it is worth, which is very little!)
Thank you! it totally makes sense and very clearly explained. I can use this as objections when talking to my top managers. you won't believe how many personas were developed :D
words to live/position by "The simpler we can keep our positioning, the stronger it will be and the easier it will be for the team to make it real in the market."
Hi April,
To answer your questions:
Was that useful? Yes, good reminders and pointers. Thanks.
Too long for a newsletter? No. As long as the content properly adds value (as this post does), then length is never a problem. I've bought and read both of your books, and their lengths were not a problem either!
How about those diagrams? They are good too. If you provide multiple representations of the same info, you have more chance of making your point hit home. Please keep including diagrams, then.
Thanks for your clear thinking and clear messages. I only discovered you a few weeks ago, and I'll keep on seeking out your reminders.
Hey thanks so much for the feedback!
Wonderful article April. Do you have some popular B2B examples for each of thes types of positioning? Someone who is doing a good job at it?
My book - Obviously Awesome - has a set of examples for each style of positioning.
Thanks April! My team have listened to your audio book, watched your talks on microconf, listened to your podcast on Lenny's newsletter and bought your latest book.
This article was obviously awesome and addresses some of the questions we've long had. I was wondering if you could share with us what are your thoughts on how we had interpreted some of your teachings:
We have one main company (Genesiv) which is basically community-building software for enterprise customers.
However, we apparently got traction early on for a special version of our software which included very niche-specific features for trading brokerage firms that include stuff that hardly any other enterprise customers used (eg. trading charts on APPLE, GOOGLE, etc). There are overlapping interests between this group (brokerage firms) and the other group (enterprise customers) such as community-building, analytics, etc. Just that the brokerage one has a big emphasis on having charts in their community (which is like a big add-on we have).
We struggled with creating a site that spoke to both groups so we ended up creating 2 sites (genesiv.com and rockqet.com) with the latter focusing entirely on brokerage firms. We were even thinking of having it as 2 separate companies with rockqet.com basically "leasing" the software from genesiv and adding on other brokerage related services that genesiv typically does not do (eg. webinars, investment research).
Was wondering if you could share some of your thoughts on this approach we arrived at. If it's too troublesome (as it's quite a long case study), that's okay too! Just wanted to let you know that your work has been amazing in helping us get a good understanding of positioning. It's practically a required reading for the team here haha.
Wishing you all the best, April!
Cheers,
Desmond Leong
Hey thanks for supporting my work.
I'm worried I don't have enough info to give you feedback on your situation and I wouldn't want to steer you wrong on this one. I think for you folks, from a marketing perspective, You could try to keep both products together until one roof, but as you have seen, it's tricky how you will handle this on the home page. The other question is whether or not there is value to anyone if you did position a company overtop of the two products. If there isn't then I think what you have done makes a lot of sense. (All that said - I probably don't know enough to give you any really good advice so take it for what it is worth, which is very little!)
Thank you! it totally makes sense and very clearly explained. I can use this as objections when talking to my top managers. you won't believe how many personas were developed :D
Oh I have lived through those meetings!!
Thanks
You are welcome!
Extremely useful, very clearly explained, simply awesome. Thank you so much for this piece!
Hey thanks so much - glad you liked it!
Thanks for sharing April, as always awesome.
You're welcome and thanks for the feedback!
You're welcome and you ROCK!