Product Positioning That Works

The Positioning Framework by April Dunford

“Of all seven companies where we had exits, at the biggest one we had the least features. It was the crappiest product compared to the competition.” — April Dunford, a global positioning expert and author, cuts straight to a truth many founders miss: great products don’t sell themselves. Smart positioning sells them.

April shared practical advice that helps founders answer their toughest questions that keep many business owners awake at night: How do we position effectively in early stages? How do we handle feature-focused buyers? And most importantly, how can we create a framework where marketing, sales, and product teams align around a consistent story that resonates with customers?

We all know that positioning matters, but translating positioning theory into practical application can be challenging. Let’s explore April’s actionable insights that won’t require a complete organizational overhaul but will generate meaningful improvements in how customers perceive and value your offering.

The Reality of Early-Stage Positioning: It’s a Thesis, Not a Fact

For entrepreneurs still in the product development phase, the idea of positioning can be intimidating. In the early stages, most of what you have is a positioning thesis—an educated guess on your market, your competitors, and your unique value proposition. 

Before locking in rigid positioning, you need to establish where your product naturally resonates. As April explains: “When we’re building something and haven’t released it yet, what we have is a positioning thesis. We think this is our competition, we think this is what makes us different. But it’s a thesis—we don’t know for sure.”

This perspective is refreshingly honest about the uncertainty of early-stage positioning. April draws from substantial experience: “I’ve launched a lot of products, almost 20 brand new products in the market. Not once did we correctly guess all those things. Sometimes we were really close, sometimes we were really far off, but we were always wrong about something.”

Cast a Wide Net, Then Focus

April recommends a practical approach that may feel counterintuitive to founders eager for clarity: begin with broader positioning to see where the market pulls you.

She uses a memorable fishing analogy: “It’s like you invented a fishing net and your thesis is this is a net for catching tuna. But maybe I’m wrong. So instead, we launch with this kind of mushy positioning and say it’s a net for fish—all kinds of fish—and then we see what we pull up. Maybe we’ll find out it’s actually amazing for grouper. Now that I know that, I’m going to tighten up my positioning and go after the grouper market.”

While “mushy positioning” is difficult to sell, April insists this exploratory phase is necessary: “You have to go through this awkward teenage phase before you know where to tighten it up. You might tighten in the wrong spot too early and shut off a market that was actually really good for you.”

The process she recommends is elegantly simple:

1. Go to market with broader positioning
2. Pay attention to who loves your product and why
3. Look for patterns in who is easy to sell to
4. Tighten your positioning around those patterns

Creating vs. Positioning in Categories: Why New Categories Rarely Work

Many founders dream of creating an entirely new category to avoid comparison with established players. April provides a reality check: <<There’s this thinking out there that ‘I’m a toilet, but I don’t want to be a toilet because then I get compared to toilets. So I’m going to pretend I’m not a toilet and make up some other category.’ The problem with that is if you are in fact a toilet, the customer is going to know, and they’re going to compare you to toilets. If there’s an obvious market category that you fit in, and you’re just creating a category for the sake of creating a category, then it never works. It literally never works. It’s better to clearly communicate where you fit than to create an artificial category that only slows down the customer’s decision-making.>>

From her previous research on this subject, she shares: “I did an analysis where I looked at companies that went public on the Nasdaq and whether they were positioned in an existing market category or creating something new. Only 7% of those companies were creating a new category at the time they went public. The other 93% are positioned in an underserved market category.”

This insight helps founders make practical decisions: “It’s much easier to say to a customer, ‘We’re in this category, but we’re for this specific need, or we do things in this different way.’ You’re leveraging what customers already know. It’s way harder to create a new category. But sometimes you have no choice. And when you have no choice, then you have to go that route.“

Handling Implementation Objections: De-risking the Decision

For complex products with significant implementation requirements, April offers targeted strategies for handling the “it sounds too difficult to switch” objection.

She reframes the underlying concern: “When a company brings up that objection—’this transition sounds really hard’—a lot of times, the real concern is risk. It’s not so much ‘this is going to be hard and take long,’ it’s ‘what if we fail? What if users refuse to adopt it? Or what if you say the integration will take a month, but it takes six months?'”

Her practical solutions include:

1. Create structured offerings – “Sometimes that means you have a professional services team and a structured offering to ensure success.”
2. Share concrete implementation timelines – “We were measuring exactly how long it took to do all the steps with existing customers, so we could point to real examples.”
3. Facilitate customer-to-prospect conversations – “If it’s a big enough deal, we would actually get the prospect to talk to the customer about the transition experience.”
4. Break large implementations into phases – “We split the deal into pieces. Instead of implementing everything all at once, we’d say, ‘We’re going to start with phase one. You’ll get this value in phase one, then we’ll do phase two, then phase three.'”

Winning Against Feature-Rich Competitors

When facing competitors with packed product capabilities, April shares surprising advice: don’t try to match their feature list. Instead, change the conversation completely. “We need to be really careful that we don’t let a competitor with more features turn it into a feature-function war. We have to come in and say, ‘Look, I get it. In a traditional solution, yes, you need all these things, but we’re actually approaching the problem completely differently for a completely different kind of customer.’

The key is helping customers understand the value trade-off: “If you do it our way, it’s a different set of values we can deliver. You’re comparing apples to oranges. It’s not about those features—it’s about the outcomes.”

Understanding Positioning, Messaging, and Copywriting

April provides clarity on three often-confused concepts, how they connect, and how to use them effectively – Positioning, Messaging, and Copywriting.

“Positioning is an input to messaging, and then copywriting is different,” April explains. This means that your positioning, which is the strategic foundation for understanding your product’s value and how it fits in the market, serves as the basis for creating effective messaging. Messaging is the framework for communicating this value to your target audience consistently across all touchpoints. And then, copywriting is the specific, purpose-driven language used in various marketing materials to drive particular actions.

Let’s break it down in a clear structure:

Positioning = where your product fits in the market, how it differs from competitors, and the unique value it delivers to your ideal customer. It is the strategic foundation that guides everything that follows.

• X: Identify your target market and customer segment.
• Y: Understand your product’s unique value proposition and competitive differentiation.
• Z: Clarify how your product solves the specific problems of your customers in ways that others do not.

Messaging = the expression of your positioning. It provides the narrative that aligns your team around a common understanding of what your product is and how it helps your customers. It helps ensure consistency across marketing materials.

• A: Define your tagline and three core value propositions.
• B: Develop messaging that resonates with your target audience, explaining the product’s features, benefits, and outcomes.
• C: Create a messaging document that serves as the foundation for all communications, with customer quotes, company descriptions, and key differentiators.

April explains: “A messaging document is, here’s our tagline, here’s our three core value propositions, and here’s the way we talk about them. We have seven or eight key features that we talk about. Here’s how we talk about them.”

Copywriting = taking the broader messaging framework and tailoring it for specific campaigns or materials. Each piece of copy serves a distinct marketing purpose and uses language designed to convert.

• D: Write copy for specific marketing channels—emails, websites, ads, etc.
• E: Adjust the tone, style, and focus depending on the audience and the objective of the campaign (e.g., lead generation, awareness, product demo).
• F: Create content that drives action, whether that’s signing up for a free trial, clicking a link, or making a purchase.

April emphasizes: “Copywriting is purpose specific… Every time you’re writing a copy, it’s for a specific purpose. So I might have a campaign that is really focused on one of my value props and not the other two.”

The Biggest Mistake 

She identifies a common mistake: <<The biggest mistake I see is people saying, ‘My homepage messaging is my positioning.’ No, it just isn’t. The homepage has a specific job. Sometimes, that job is to drive you to sign up for a free trial, so you make choices about what goes on the homepage that don’t capture all of your positioning.>> The homepage’s messaging may focus on answering key questions, driving conversions, or encouraging sign-ups for a free trial rather than fully representing your product’s positioning.

Applied Learning in Practice

For organizations looking to implement April’s approach to positioning, consider these practical steps:

1. Create a positioning thesis – Document your best current understanding, but be prepared to revise it
2. Go broad before narrowing – Allow for exploration in early stages to see where your product naturally gains traction
3. Look for patterns in early adopters – Pay attention to which customers are easiest to convert and most enthusiastic
4. Position within categories when possible – Leverage existing customer understanding rather than creating unnecessary new categories
5. Develop risk-mitigation strategies – For complex products, focus on addressing the customer’s underlying concerns about risk

Final Thoughts

Companies succeed when they communicate their value effectively. April’s practical framework helps you discover the right positioning through market feedback rather than guesswork.

Successful companies launch with their best positioning guess, listen carefully to market responses, and quickly adjust based on what they learn. The winners aren’t those who nail positioning on day one—they’re the ones who adapt fastest to market signals.

Start where you are. Listen better than competitors. Adapt quickly. And remember: your customers are already telling you exactly how to position your product —you just need to follow their lead.

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