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Positioning is the space your product occupies in the customer’s mind relative to the alternatives. Your value proposition is the clearest expression of why someone should choose you. They’re related but not the same thing - and getting both right is one of the highest-leverage things a product team can do 🎯

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Positioning

Good positioning answers three questions:
  • Who is this for?
  • What category does it belong to?
  • Why is it different from everything else in that category?
The classic positioning statement format (from Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm): “For [target customer] who [has this need], [product name] is a [category] that [key benefit]. Unlike [primary alternative], our product [key differentiator].” It’s a bit formulaic, but filling it in honestly is a useful exercise. The hard part isn’t the format - it’s being specific enough to be meaningful. “Better than the competition” is not positioning. “The only project management tool built for freelance designers who invoice in multiple currencies” is positioning 💡 Martina Lauchengco’s Loved is the best modern treatment of this - she’s explicit that positioning is a strategic choice, not a marketing exercise, and that it should be owned jointly by product and marketing.

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Value proposition

The value proposition translates your positioning into customer language. Not what the product does - what the customer gets. The structure that works: [Customer] can [do something they couldn’t before / do something faster/easier] because [your product does X]. The test: can a potential customer read it and immediately understand whether it’s for them? If it takes explanation, it’s not there yet.

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The competitive alternative

Both positioning and value proposition only make sense relative to an alternative. That alternative might be a direct competitor, a different category of tool, or doing nothing. Ignoring the alternative produces positioning that sounds good internally but means nothing to customers who are making a real choice 🙌 Georgiana Laudi and Claire Suellentrop’s Forget The Funnel grounds value proposition work in customer research - the language that resonates comes from how your best customers describe the value themselves, not from what you think sounds good. Lesson learned: the best value proposition work I’ve been part of started with reading interview transcripts, not writing in a conference room. The customers always had better words for it than we did.