Obviously Awesome

If you’re a baker, making bread, you’re a baker. If you make the best bread in the world, you’re not an artist, but if you bake the bread in the gallery, you’re an artist. So the context makes the difference.

THE TRADITIONAL POSITIONING STATEMENT FOR target buyers, your offering IS A market category WHICH PROVIDES competitor’s benefits UNLIKE primary competitor WHICH PROVIDES competitor’s benefits

You cannot be everything to everyone. If you decide to go north, you cannot go south at the same time.

Alternatives to your product can be “hire an intern to do it,” “use a spreadsheet” or even “suffer along with the problem and do nothing.”

The competitive alternative is what your target customers would “use” or “do” if your product didn’t exist.

There is only one thing stronger than all the armies of the world: and that is an idea whose time has come.

It’s no use of talking unless people understand what you say.

We don’t know who discovered water, but we’re certain it wasn’t a fish.

Concentrate on “consideration” rather than “retention” attributes.

Feature: Something your product does or has Benefit: What the feature enables for customers Value: How this feature maps to a goal the customer is trying to achieve

The stone age didn’t end because they ran out of stones.

Remember: this positioning exercise is not about highlighting every little feature and attribute that our customers love. In positioning a product, we’re taking the most critical things that make us special and worth considering, and bringing the resulting unique value to the front and center.

Marketers call this step a “segmentation” exercise. In my experience, if there’s a marketing concept more widely misunderstood than positioning, it’s segmentation.

for example, “this product is aimed at single men between the ages of 18 and 30.” Demographic thinking often bleeds into the way people typically think of segmenting a market of businesses—for example, “small businesses” or “businesses with 100 to 2,000 employees.” A useful segmentation, however, needs to go well beyond demographics or firmographics.

If you choose to use the Head to Head style... Be prepared to battle against multiple competitors who will be simultaneously trying to prove they are better than you are at the currently established buying criteria, as well as others who are trying to redefine the purchase criteria to their advant

You are competing directly against other established players in a well-defined market. For the most part, customers are well educated about what solutions in this market can and cannot do. Prospects also understand the purchase criteria (what is important to consider when making a purchase and what is not).

If you choose to use the Head to Head style... Be prepared to battle against multiple competitors who will be simultaneously trying to prove they are better than you are at the currently established buying criteria, as well as others who are trying to redefine the purchase criteria to their advantage.

The goal of the Big Fish, Small Pond style of positioning is to carve off a piece of the market where the rules are a little bit different—just enough to give your product an edge over the category leader.

In Head to Head you are attempting to beat Coke in the cola market; in Big Fish, Small Pond, you’re selling Coke for dogs.

If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

Positioning canvas