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

Positioning is foundational for a product's marketing and sales as it sets context, distinguishes from competitors, and resonates with a target audience. It's often wrongly equated with branding or messaging and misunderstood by many in tech. A strong example is reframing a product like cake as a muffin, altering context and comparisons, influencing customer perceptions and pricing.

Many companies, especially startups, fail to deliberately position their products, believing their initial idea suffices. This leads to a disconnect as the product evolves, exemplified by companies mislabeling an email-like product as chat. Proper positioning clarifies product category, competition, and expected pricing, as illustrated by positioning a CRM against Salesforce.

Bad positioning misleads customer assumptions, complicating marketing and sales efforts. Successful tech positioning often involves dominating an underserved segment before expanding. An example is Jan Systems altering from competing directly with a market leader to specializing in CRM for investment Banks, allowing targeted niche dominance and eventual expansion opportunities.

Niche market dominance strategy involves starting in a small, neglected segment and expanding from there. This allows companies to focus resources, minimize direct competition with industry leaders, and build a stepping stone for broader market ambitions. The challenge is balancing initial small-target focus with long-term growth potential to attract investors.

B2B positioning differs from B2C as it deals with multiple stakeholders, often driven by fear of poor choices rather than personal preferences. Unlike B2C, where decisions might be emotionally driven, B2B demands rational justification for purchases, focusing on improving or saving resources to secure organizational and personal stakes.

Positioning affects buying decisions, especially in B2B where the stakes are high. Misaligned positioning can result in no decision, as fear of error stalls purchases. Proper understanding and communication of differentiated value that addresses specific customer pain points are essential, shifting focus from competitors to demonstrable benefits.

Repositioning failures often stem from misaligned assumptions about the product's value or market demand, as in the case of a fast query database misaligned with actual needs. Thorough customer Discovery is vital to ensure alignment of product features with true market requirements, avoiding building innovative but unwanted products.

Positioning on webpages must swiftly communicate unique value and target audience, focusing on benefits rather than features. Companies often assume understanding of their product’s features will naturally convey value, leading to missed connections with potential customers who need explicit explanation of benefits.

Positioning clarity is often evaluated via customer comprehension and market comparison during sales. Misalignment may cause confusion or wrongful competitor comparisons, hindering sales efforts. It's essential that positioning resonates specifically with the target customer, ensuring clarity in product understanding and competitive landscape.

Effective B2B positioning requires cross-functional effort involving marketing, sales, product teams, and leadership to ensure alignment and consistent execution. Positioning stewards, typically marketing, monitor consistency and market changes, but broad agreement across key company functions is crucial for lasting impact.

Companies err by not actively managing positioning, relying on superficial changes, or pursuing unnecessary category creation leading to confusion. Properly managed positioning considers product uniqueness, market dynamics, and customer perception. Misguided attempts to create new categories without clear differentiation often fail to resonate with the market.

B2B marketing education often misses the complexity of decision-making processes involving multiple stakeholders, focusing more on consumer marketing principles. Real-world B2B demands understanding of sophisticated purchase drivers, such as fear of poor decisions, requiring more nuanced sales and marketing strategies than typically taught.

Overcoming customer indecision—driven by fear—is a significant challenge in B2B, requiring clear communication of unique benefits and addressing safety and confidence in decision-making. Misunderstanding this dynamic results in lost opportunities, emphasizing the need for strategies that better manage indecision than traditional marketing tactics.