The Marketing Expert: How to Get More Sales, Loyal Customers, and Bigger Promotions

The discussion centers on the critical importance of product positioning in the tech industry, emphasizing that it is not merely about messaging or branding but about setting the context for how a product is perceived and valued by a specific customer segment. April Dunford, a positioning expert, explains that successful positioning involves identifying an underserved market segment, dominating it, and then expanding. She highlights common mistakes, such as neglecting deliberate positioning and misidentifying market categories. Dunford underscores the necessity of cross-functional collaboration in defining positioning and the role of storytelling in differentiating products within a crowded marketplace.

• Positioning is misunderstood and often confused with messaging, taglines, or branding.
• Positioning is the foundation upon which all marketing and sales efforts are built.
• Proper positioning defines how a product is the best at delivering value to a specific set of customers.

"Positioning defines how your product is the best in the world at delivering something some value that a well-defined set of customers cares a lot about."

• Positioning is about setting the context for a product so customers understand what it is and why they should care.
• Example: A double chocolate salted caramel muffin is positioned differently than a cake, even though they are essentially the same product.

"If I put it in the muffin format and I call it a muffin, everything about that is different. The whole context around it is different."

• Many companies do not think about positioning deliberately; it often feels obvious to them.
• Founders may start with a clear idea, but as the product evolves, the initial positioning may no longer fit.
• Misalignment between how a company views its product and how customers perceive it can lead to confusion.

"The founder woke up one morning and said, you know what sucks? Email sucks. We're going to make way better email."

• Positioning should not be taken for granted or left to evolve without direction.

• Positioning shapes the environment in the consumer's mind, influencing their expectations and comparisons.
• A well-positioned product sets off a set of assumptions that are true and beneficial.
• Poor positioning sets off assumptions that are not true, making marketing and sales efforts more difficult.

"If I do a terrible job of it, I position my product in a market category such that it sets off a set of assumptions about my product that are not true."

• Example: Positioning a product as CRM (Customer Relationship Management) immediately sets expectations about competitors, features, buyers, and pricing.

"I walk out and I say I've got this amazing thing, it's revolutionary Next Generation thing, but it's CRM."

• Successful tech companies often find an underserved sub-segment of the market and dominate it before expanding.
• Example: A company positioned as "Enterprise CRM" struggled against a larger competitor but succeeded by focusing on a specific feature valuable to investment banks.

"We narrowed down the positioning and instead of saying we were Enterprise CRM, we were CRM for investment Banks."

• This strategy helps avoid direct competition with industry giants and allows for gradual market expansion.

• Investors may worry about the size of the addressable market if the initial positioning seems too narrow.
• Companies need to communicate a long-term vision and a pathway to a larger market.

"For an investor, you need to talk about the long-term story. Where do we want to be in 10 years?"

• Example: Salesforce started by targeting small and medium businesses with no IT departments, avoiding competition with established enterprise solutions.

"Their big slogan of no software was all about that they were selling to Tiny companies that had no IT Department."

• Positioning is a critical and foundational aspect of marketing and sales.
• Companies need to be deliberate and strategic about positioning to ensure alignment with customer perceptions and market realities.
• Successful positioning involves finding a niche, dominating it, and then expanding strategically.

"Great positioning is all about defining where do you win, like where are you the best in the world."

• Successful companies often begin by dominating a small market that the market leader ignores.
• They then push the boundaries of that market to challenge the market leader.

"Generally, if you look at most the vast majority of successful companies, they've started by dominating a market that was too small for the market leader to care about."

• This approach allows companies to gain a foothold and gradually expand.

• B2B Positioning:
  • Focuses on the differentiated value that can be delivered uniquely.
  • Multiple stakeholders (5-11 on average) are involved in the decision-making process.
  • Decisions are driven by fear of making a poor choice and justifying the business case.

"In businesses to business, typically there isn't one person buying, typically there's a group of people. The average B2B deal, there's 5 to 11 stakeholders in the deal."

• B2C Positioning:
  • Value can be more subjective and varied (e.g., color preference, status symbol).
  • Decisions can be more emotional and less fear-driven compared to B2B.

"In consumer products, value can be all kinds of things. I might buy shoes because I just like the color green."

• Fear of making a mistake drives many B2B decisions.
• Incumbents like Salesforce have an advantage because they are seen as the safe choice.

"The granddaddy of emotions is fear: fear making a poor choice, fear looking bad in front of my boss, fear getting fired."

• Competing against established leaders is challenging due to the perceived risk.

• Luxury goods are often about signaling wealth and success rather than practical utility.
• Consumer purchasing decisions can be highly irrational and driven by various personal values.

"A lot of times I think luxury goods are really about a signal to the market: it's like I'm a rich successful person."

• High stakes in B2B decisions lead to a high rate of no decision (50-70%).
• No decision often results from everything looking the same, making it hard to justify a choice.

"It's so scary to purchase something in B2B that 50 to 70% of the time a deal that gets started actually ends in no decision."

• Many companies fail by not deliberately positioning their product against competitors.
• The real challenge is to answer why a customer should pick your product over others.

"The biggest mistake is not deliberately positioning. I think a lot of companies start looking at their product in isolation almost like there are no competitors."

• A company developed a fast query database initially positioned as a database but failed due to market dominance by Oracle.
• Repositioning as a data warehouse improved initial calls but failed because the speed feature wasn't valued by most potential customers.

"We eventually repositioned it as a data warehouse... The problem was when we looked at we had an assumption that if you had these queries that took three days, you would want to be able to do them in 10 seconds versus 3 days and it turned out that assumption was wrong."

• Only a small niche of customers needed the speed, making the market too small.

• The Lean Startup methodology emphasizes customer discovery before product development.
• Validating assumptions with potential customers is crucial but often overlooked.

"You should be out interviewing customers or potential customers and validating the assumptions that you have about this Market."

• Even with customer discovery, market conditions and customer needs can change, making it challenging to predict success.

• Effective positioning on a web page must quickly communicate value, differentiation, and target audience.
• Avoid focusing solely on features; emphasize the benefits and why they matter.

"The biggest mistake I see technology companies making is they're so certain that their features are valuable and people will just understand what the value of those features are."

• Innovative features require clear communication to help customers understand their value.

"We get so close to it we just assume that the customer can make the translation from feature to Value but a lot of times they can't."

• Consumers have been trained to understand certain technical specifications (e.g., megapixels in cameras).
• Initially, companies need to educate consumers on why specific features matter.

"The first time anybody ever talked to you about megapixels you had no idea what a megapixel even was. Companies had to teach you why that was important."

• Over time, some features become less emphasized as consumers become more familiar with their value.

• Positioning fundamentals have remained consistent despite digital transformation.
• The concept of positioning was introduced by Reas and Trout in their 1982 book "Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind."
• Importance of positioning has increased due to the explosion of choices and advertising messages.

"The fundamentals of positioning haven't changed at all is my opinion."

• Positioning principles remain the same despite changes in the market landscape.

"In 1982, we have so many choices now positioning is really important because the customer has thousands of choices, hundreds of choices."

• The proliferation of choices has made positioning crucial for standing out in a crowded market.

"It's much harder now to stand out in a world where we're exposed to millions of advertising messages a day."

• The digital age has increased the number of advertising messages, making clear positioning essential.

• Companies need to be concise about their value proposition, target audience, and differentiation.
• Small companies can compete with larger ones by focusing on niche markets.
• Clear positioning helps in breaking through the noise of a crowded market.

"We're going to have to get really clear on what is this thing, what is the value of this thing, who is it for, how is it different from the other things in the market."

• Clarity in positioning is essential to stand out in a saturated market.

"If we're a small company competing with Salesforce, but we have one particular feature that they don't have, and we have our niche market, we can stand out."

• Small companies can leverage unique features to differentiate themselves in niche markets.

"You don't want the world's greatest general purpose CRM; you want the world's greatest CRM for people like you."

• Specificity in positioning helps target and attract the right audience effectively.

• Evaluating positioning in B2B is challenging and cannot be done just by looking at a website.
• Positioning needs to resonate with the target audience, not just be understandable by everyone.
• The effectiveness of positioning is gauged by how quickly prospects understand the product's value and differentiation.

"In B2B, if I'm selling a specialized thing to specialized buyers, it just needs to resonate with them."

• Positioning should be tailored to resonate with the specific target audience.

"What really matters is when we have a brand new prospect that comes in that doesn't really know too much about us, how long does it take us before it clicks."

• The time it takes for a prospect to understand the product's value is a key indicator of effective positioning.

• Confusion during sales pitches where customers don't understand the product.
• Misidentification of competitors by customers.
• Customers questioning the value of the product and why they should pay for it.

"The most common sign you see is the customer looking at it and they're like, I just can't figure out what this thing is."

• Customer confusion during initial pitches indicates weak positioning.

"You'll get to slide three or four, and the customer will say, 'Yeah, I get it, you're just like Salesforce,' and you're nothing like Salesforce."

• Misidentification of competitors shows a lack of clear differentiation.

"The prospect will say, 'I get it, I get what you are, I get who you compete with, I just don't really get why we would pay money for that.'"

• Customers questioning the value of the product indicates a failure in communicating its benefits.

• Traditionally seen as a marketing function, but it should be a cross-functional effort.
• Involves input from product, sales, customer success, support, and the CEO.
• Marketing acts as the steward of positioning, ensuring consistency and alignment across departments.

"Traditionally been seen as a marketing function, but I don't believe that. I think that's not the right way to think about it."

• Positioning should not be solely a marketing responsibility.

"We bring together product, marketing, sales, customer success, support, and we bring everybody together and everybody comes with what they understand about customers and how we win."

• A cross-functional team approach is essential for effective positioning.

"Marketing can be the steward of here's the positioning, here's how we define it, this is the messaging that comes out of that positioning."

• Marketing ensures the consistency and alignment of positioning across the company.

• Positioning problems are different from other business issues like lead generation or sales execution.
• Good positioning is indicated by happy, referenceable customers and a clear understanding during sales pitches.
• Positioning helps close the gap between what a customer knows and what a prospect knows.

"Sometimes companies will call me and they think they have a positioning problem, and then I have a conversation with them, and I'm like, I don't actually think that's a positioning problem."

• Not all business issues are related to positioning; some may be due to other factors like lead generation or sales execution.

"Do you have good happy customers that stick with you and love you and are referenceable?"

• Happy, referenceable customers indicate good positioning.

"That gap between what a customer knows and what a prospect knows, we can close that gap with good positioning."

• Effective positioning helps bridge the knowledge gap between customers and prospects.

• Storytelling is crucial for B2B marketing but often overlooked by sales teams.
• The hero's journey structure is common but lacks a focus on competitors.
• Effective storytelling should answer why customers should pick you over competitors.

"Most of the storytelling stuff that you see or at least what I learned as a marketer going through if you go to marketing school and learn storytelling, a lot of what you'll see is this hero's journey structure."

• The hero's journey is a common storytelling structure but may not be sufficient for B2B.

"The problem with that storytelling Arc is there's kind of no competitor in there."

• The hero's journey lacks a focus on differentiating from competitors.

"The story that we're trying to tell needs to answer this question: why pick us over the other guys?"

• Effective storytelling in B2B should focus on differentiation and competitive advantage.

• Postman does an excellent job of explaining the importance of APIs and their platform.
• They use a graphic novel to communicate their story effectively to technical audiences.
• Their storytelling helps customers understand the value and necessity of their product.

"Postman does essentially a platform for developing APIs. This Is A New Concept nobody had this idea of a platform for APIs before Postman came up with it."

• Postman introduced a novel concept and effectively communicated its value.

"They've coined a concept called an API first world and then they've done an amazing job of storytelling around that."

• Postman created a compelling narrative around the importance of APIs.

"They have a graphic novel called the API first world designed for technical people to understand this story of what's an API, why is it important, why do we really want to have high-quality APIs."

• The graphic novel helps technical audiences grasp the importance and value of APIs.

• CEOs often focus on market perspectives rather than just the product.
• A strong market viewpoint can drive product sales by aligning with customer perspectives.
• Communicating a unique viewpoint on the market is crucial for customer engagement and product adoption.

"If you are aligned with his point of view on the market, you're going to buy his product."

• Understanding and agreeing with the CEO's market perspective can lead to product purchases.

"We need to communicate to customers... we have a different perspective on this."

• Effective communication of a unique market perspective is key to customer understanding and product differentiation.

• Defining new market categories and vocabulary is essential for innovative products.
• Helps in setting the boundaries of emerging market categories and making customers aware of new problems.

"If you are doing something that is truly innovative... we may want to specifically name the market category in a way that advantages us."

• Naming market categories and key concepts helps in establishing a new market and educating customers.

"If the customer knew there was a problem and they have that problem, there would be categories of solutions to solve it already."

• Emerging markets often address problems that customers are not yet aware of.

• Analyst bodies like Gartner can significantly influence enterprise purchases.
• Understanding where customers seek advice is crucial for positioning and educating influencers.

"No large enterprise buys a database without talking to Gartner group first."

• Gartner's opinion is critical in enterprise database purchases.

"It's important to understand who influences your buyer and invest energy in making sure that those influencers understand our stuff."

• Identifying and educating key influencers is essential for product positioning.

• Not considering multiple market positions for a product.
• Treating positioning as a superficial marketing exercise.
• Misguided attempts at category creation leading to customer confusion.

"The first mistake is not thinking about it at all and just assuming that there's only one position we could possibly take."

• Overlooking the potential for multiple market positions is a common error.

"Treating it as a little marketing exercise... this is not repositioning."

• Superficial changes without strategic alignment do not constitute effective positioning.

"Companies that love the idea of category creation are attempting to create a category when they obviously fit in an existing market category."

• Misguided category creation efforts can confuse customers and hinder product adoption.

• Academic research often focuses on consumer packaged goods, not B2B.
• B2B marketing involves more complex decision-making processes and higher stakes.

"Most of the research is done on consumer packaged goods... stretching it out and saying obviously this works B2B exactly the same way."

• Misapplication of consumer marketing principles to B2B contexts can be misleading.

"We don't teach enough about the difference between a highly considered purchase versus an unconsidered purchase."

• Academic programs often lack focus on the unique aspects of B2B marketing.

• High rates of indecision in B2B purchases are a major challenge.
• Understanding and addressing customer fears can improve decision-making processes.

"40 to 60% of B2B purchase processes end in no decision."

• A significant portion of B2B purchase processes result in no decision due to indecision and fear.

"We look at our choices, we can't figure out how to do that in a way that we're sure isn't going to get us into trouble, so we just don't do anything."

• Fear of making the wrong choice often leads to inaction in B2B purchases.

• Focusing on areas of expertise and avoiding weaknesses can lead to greater satisfaction and effectiveness.
• Finding a niche where one's skills have a significant impact can be highly rewarding.

"I just get to do that thing that I love and so that has been such satisfying work."

• Specializing in a particular area of expertise can lead to fulfilling and impactful work.

"This does feel like the reward phase of my career that I just get to work in my little zone of excellence."

• Structuring one's career to focus on strengths can lead to a highly satisfying professional life.