Features are not your friend

In previous articles, we discussed the what (you do) and who (it's for).

What we still need to cover is the why. As in, why should the market care about your product amongst all other options?

Up to this point, we've identified your product benefits derived from its features.

But I want to share a secret with you. When it comes to marketing…

Features are not your friend

Think about the uninvited service vendors entering your inbox.

The cold outreach providers, content writers, lead gen platforms, and offshore SEO agencies.

The market is full of them.

They're commodities, completely interchangeable with one another. They don't attract clients, so they cold outreach on mass whilst they struggle to win profitable work.

But why?

Because they sell features

They sell what the product does, implicitly, they tell us:

• We email a large volume of people (that you don't know) on your behalf
• We write blog posts for you
• We sell you (lukewarm) leads
• We do on-page SEO for you

And because they sell features, they all look the same. There's no point of contrast.

If I click through the SEO category on Clutch, I find 54,796 'specialist' SEO agencies.

If I'm a buyer, how on earth do I pick one?

Even if I filter by reviews and rates, I still have thousands that all look identical.

As a prospective buyer, I either go for the cheapest, or feeling overwhelmed by the volume of choices, I do nothing. In fact, 65% of deal lost is due to indecision.

But this isn't the part where I tell you to sell benefits

In isolation, 'sell benefits, not features' isn't particularly helpful advice. It lacks the specificity and nuance inherent in effective product positioning.

No, to understand the 'why' in the positioning equation, let's revert to Seth Godin.

A black-and-white cow in a field of black-and-white cows doesn't get noticed. She looks the same as every other cow in the field.

But, what if you introduce a purple cow? That cow stands out! If you're that cow, everyone notices you, and those people who like the colour purple, they'll favour you over every other cow in the field.

That's differentiation.

Now, before we move forward, it's important to acknowledge something.

The purple cow is differentiated. But the 'purple' factor is only one element at play here. The other is the fact that every other cow in the field is some varying shade of black and white.

To create a differentiated position for your product, you not only need to create a purple cow, but you also have to observe, recognise, and label the 'black and white' sameness, rendering the competition that you're up against identical.

That's the market context.

Unfortunately, in real life, contrast isn't as obvious as colour.

So, what does this look like in practice?

Drift sells live chat. That's the feature. You embed a widget on your website so visitors can communicate with you in real time.

But, being smart marketing people, Drift didn't focus their positioning on a feature.

First, they identify the symptoms of their ideal customer's pain, as well as their promised land:

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Then famously, Drift identified an enemy, named it, and set their solution as the contrasting hero.

The enemy? Forms.

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From Drift's perspective, forms represented a leaky bucket.

How many ideal customers pass through your website because you make it too hard for them to reach out?

In fact, it wasn't just the forms that were the problem. It was the whole sales flow of passing a lead from enquiry to demo.

That was the enemy, so they gave it a label - The Old Way.

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In doing so, they created a new subcategory (real-time selling) and contrasted their solution against every email provider and CRM on the market.

Do you see what's at play here?

Positioning is about picking and naming the category you play in (or the category you don't).

If your category is big enough, chances are that established products offer a wide range of user jobs to be done, which you can segment.

For example, let's say the category is helping companies manage their customer success. There are many components within that job like:

• Onboarding
• Communication
• Health and Monitoring
• Feedback and Surveys
• Success Planning
• Account Management
• Churn Prediction and Prevention

There'll be many more, but it's clear that within one category are multiple subcategories (and likely sub-sub categories).

Within those subcategories lies the one job to be done, one subcategory that you can lead.

It also works when you pick a vertical niche

That's what Salesforce did. The category was customer relationship management, and when they were starting out, it was dominated by Oracle and SAP.

Salesforce didn't take them head-on. They created a subcategory - cloud-based CRM for sales teams.

But how do you apply this to your positioning?

Here's what you do…

First, go to Capterra or G2, search around your 'parent' category and pick out the competitors. Whilst you're there, take note of all the related subcategories.

Even if they're not directly competing with you, you're looking for companies that offer to solve the same job you do, either partially or in full.

Now, go to their websites and gather their headline and subheadline. That's their positioning.

You'll discover something unexpected…

It's all fluff

Or mostly, it is. That's fine. It means they have a weak position (which is good for you). Create a map of the terrain, then start playing around with X/Y axis combinations.

From your customer interviews, you know what your market values relative to what you offer. And now, you know how the competition is positioned. Find the X/Y axis combination that places you as the one and only.

What we're doing here is anchoring ourselves to one job to be done, and, in doing so, contrasting ourselves with the rest of the market.

That's it. Once you've found the white space, positioning done…

Well, not quite

We've identified:

1/ Who your product is for, whether ICP, persona, or both.

2/ What it does (for that person)

3/ How it's different (relative to alternative options in the category)

Now, we need to figure out how to successfully articulate that position to the market.

That's in the next article.