Book Highlights - Obviously Awesome by April Dunford
My highlights from the book
I recently finished reading ‘Obviously Awesome’ by April Dunford. The book focuses on providing a step-by-step process to evolve the positioning of a product. It covers the 6 key elements of effective positioning and then describes the steps needed to arrive at a focused positioning.
As a matter of habit, I extensively highlight any book I read. Here’s a quick look at my highlights. If you do like this, you can know more about the book on Goodreads.
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Key highlights of Obviously Awesome by April Dunford
The first step to optimizing positioning is to really understand what it is. I like to describe positioning as “context setting” for products.
Positioning as context
Context enables people to figure out what’s important. Positioning products is a lot like context setting in the opening of a movie.
These are the Five (Plus One) Components of Effective Positioning
Competitive alternatives. What customers would do if your solution didn’t exist.
Unique attributes. The features and capabilities that you have and the alternatives lack
Value (and proof). The benefit that those features enable for customers
Target market characteristics. The characteristics of a group of buyers that lead them to really care a lot about the value you deliver
Market category. The market you describe yourself as being part of, to help customers understand your value
(Bonus) Relevant trends. Trends that your target customers understand and/or are interested in that can help
The competitive alternative is what your target customers would “use” or “do” if your product didn’t exist.
It’s important to really understand what customers compare your solution with, because that’s the yardstick they use to define “better.
Your unique attributes are your secret sauce, the things you can do that the alternatives can’t.
Value is the benefit you can deliver to customers because of your unique attributes.
If unique attributes are your secret sauce, then value is the reason why someone might care about your secret sauce.
Your target market is the customers who buy quickly, rarely ask for discounts and tell their friends about your offerings.
Declaring that your product exists in a market category triggers a set of powerful assumptions
Your market category can work for you or against you
There is another way to give your customers additional context to help them understand why your product is valuable. Used carefully, trends can help customers understand why your offering is something they need to pay attention to right now.
It’s easy to confuse market categories and trends, but they are not the same thing. Market categories are a collection of products with similar characteristics. Trends are more like a characteristic itself, but one that happens to be very new and noteworthy at a given point in time
Using a trend in positioning is optional (but often desirable)
Position your product in a market category that puts your offering’s strengths in their best context, and then look for relevant trends in your industry that can help customers understand why they should consider this product right now.
Attributes of your product are only “unique” when compared with competitive alternatives. Those attributes drive the value, which determines who the best target customers are, which in turn highlights which market frame of reference is the best one to highlight your value. Trends must be relevant to your target customers, and can be used in combination with your market category to make your product more relevant to your buyers right now.
Steps to arrive at positioning of your product
STEP 1 . Understand the Customers Who Love Your Product
Your best-fit customers hold the key to understanding what your product is
The first step in the positioning exercise is to make a short list of your best customers.
The trouble is, we frequently see our competitors much differently than customers see them
Customer-facing positioning must be centered on a customer frame of reference.
In the early days of a company with a single product, positioning the product and the company as the same thing
STEP 2 . Form a Positioning Team
STEP 3 . Align Your Positioning Vocabulary and Let Go of Your Positioning Baggage
The reality is that most products can be many things to many types of buyers.
STEP 4 . List Your True Competitive Alternatives
The features of our product and the value they provide are only unique, interesting and valuable when a customer perceives them in relation to alternatives.
Customers, although well-versed in their problems, are often terrible at describing them in a way that gives product creators enough nuance to make decisions.
To really understand how they perceived our strengths and weaknesses, we needed to understand the alternatives to which they compared us.
Understand what a customer might replace you with in order to understand how they categorize your solution.
Focus on your best customers and what they would identify as alternative solutions.
The competitive alternatives often naturally cluster, and if so, it’s helpful to group them
Step 5. Isolate Your Unique Attributes or Features
In this step you need to stay focused on features and capabilities (also called attributes), rather than the value that those features drive for customers
In this step, list all of the capabilities you have that the alternatives do not.
Your opinion of your own strengths is irrelevant without proof.
Concentrate on “consideration” rather than “retention” attributes. Consideration attributes are things that customers care about when they are evaluating whether or not to make a purchase.
STEP 6 . Map the Attributes to Value “Themes”
Articulating value takes the benefits one step further: putting benefits into the context of a goal the customer is trying to achieve.
Features enable benefits, which can be translated into value in unique customer terms.
In your list, you should see a handful of themes start to emerge and the value those features deliver to customers. Now we need to organize the list.
To group points of value, you need to take the perspective of a customer.
Group attributes that provide similar value so you can get down to a more reasonable number.
Remember: this positioning exercise is not about highlighting every little feature and attribute that our customers love.
STEP 7 . Determine Who Cares a Lot
Once you have a good understanding of the value that your product delivers versus other alternatives, you can look at which customers really care a lot about that value.
An actionable segmentation captures a list of a person’s or company’s easily identifiable characteristics that make them really care about what you do.
Best-fit customers are easiest to sell to and retain.
Your other customers think your product is OK for the price, but they will jump ship if a different company offers a cheaper or better version.
Now think about your best customers. Everything about doing business with them is different. They understood your product immediately and couldn’t wait to get their hands on it
The segment needs to meet at least two criteria to be worthy of focus: (1) it needs to be big enough that it’s possible to meet the goals of your business, and (2) it needs to have important, specific, unmet needs that are common to the segment.
I encourage teams not to get their positioning too far ahead of their business objectives.
Keep in mind that your product positioning will constantly be evolving
STEP 8 . Find a Market Frame of Reference That Puts Your Strengths at the Center and Determine How to Position in It
Since your offering evolved and the market itself evolved over time, the original market category may no longer be the best way to frame your unique strengths. Also, the customers most likely to buy your product might have a very different point of view on markets than you do.
We position our offering in a market to trigger a set of assumptions—about competitors, features and pricing—that work to our advantage.
With abductive reasoning, you choose a market category by isolating your key features and their value, and asking yourself, What types of products typically have those features? What category of products typically deliver that value?
Another place to look for options is in the markets adjacent to the one in which you have been positioning yourself.
Ask your customers (but be cautious).
There are different approaches for isolating, targeting and winning a market—and certain styles work better for some than others.
Head to Head: Positioning to win an existing market
Big Fish, Small Pond: Positioning to win a subsegment of an existing market
Create a New Game: Positioning to win a market you create
To credibly create a new category, you need a product that is demonstrably, inarguably new and different from what exists in other market categories.
STEP 9 . Layer On a Trend (but Be Careful)
Once you have determined your market context, you can start to think about how you can layer a trend on top of your positioning to help potential customers understand why your offering is important to them right now. This step is optional but potentially really powerful—if you go about it carefully.
The use of a relevant trend is not a prerequisite for success, but trends can sometimes give “boring” products an extra gloss of interest. Caution: if the trend doesn’t reinforce your positioning, it can also muddy your positioning waters.
Describing a trend without declaring a market can make your product cool but baffling
STEP 10 . Capture Your Positioning so It Can Be Shared
Positioning on its own isn’t useful to a company. Once you have worked through your positioning, you need to share it across the organization. Positioning needs to have company buy-in so it can be used to inform branding, marketing campaigns, sales strategy, product decisions and customer-success strategy.
I want to leave you with some key takeaways:
o Any product can be positioned in multiple markets.
o Great positioning rarely comes by default.
o Understanding what your best customers see as true alternatives to your solution will lead you to your differentiators.
o Position yourself in a market that makes your strengths obvious to the folks you want to sell to.
o Use trends to make your product more interesting to customers right now, but be very cautious
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