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. Do we need different positioning for each of those things? Should we have a different sales pitch for each market segment and persona?
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.
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.
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?
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
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
Thanks
Extremely useful, very clearly explained, simply awesome. Thank you so much for this piece!
Thanks for sharing April, as always awesome.