positioning-and-messaging

What this skill does

# Positioning & Messaging

**Category:** Marketing

**Source:** https://refoundai.com/lenny-skills/s/positioning-messaging

---

Positioning & Messaging | Refound AI

Lenny Skills Database     SKILLS  PLAYBOOKS  GUESTS  ABOUT               SKILLS  PLAYBOOKS  GUESTS  ABOUT                     Marketing   58 guests | 106 insights

Positioning & Messaging  Positioning defines the space your product occupies in the customer's mind and determines how they describe it to others. Weak positioning creates friction throughout the sales funnel; strong positioning makes customers feel understood and compelled to act. Focus on differentiated value against real alternatives, use the customer's own language, and test messaging like a product.

Download Claude Skill

Read Guide

The Guide  5 key steps synthesized from 58 experts.

1 Define your competitive alternatives first  Positioning starts with understanding what customers would do if your product didn't exist. This includes direct competitors, adjacent solutions, and the status quo (spreadsheets, manual labor). List features unique to your product versus those alternatives, then ask 'so what?' for each to uncover actual value.

Featured guest perspectives

"Differentiated value is the answer to the question why pick us over the other alternatives? And so the way we get at that in positioning is we start with putting a stake in the ground of who do we actually compete with?"

— April Dunford    "Positioning is the space that you occupy in your target customer's mind and everything you can do to influence how they describe your product. You have a positioning problem if I ask 10 of your customers or 10 of your employees what the company does... and I get multiple answers."

— Arielle Jackson        2 Frame the shift from old game to new game  Effective positioning frames your product as a response to a fundamental shift in the market paradigm. Name the old game and the new game concisely (e.g., 'Software' vs. 'Cloud', 'Transactions' vs. 'Subscriptions'). This creates urgency and positions you as the leader of a movement.

Featured guest perspectives

"Every movie starts with some kind of shift in the world, and I call this shift the shift from the old game to a new game. The archetypal example... is what Benioff did with Salesforce. So he comes in and he says, 'Hey, software is over and there's this new world called the cloud, a new game, new rules.'"

— Andy Raskin        3 Use your customers' own language  Effective messaging 'reflects customers back to them,' proving you understand their problem. Conduct extensive customer conversations to hear their specific language. Avoid buzzwords like 'efficiency' or 'collaboration' when targeting practitioners; use technical features and craft-based language instead.

Featured guest perspectives

"You want to reflect them back to them. That is what is going to show them that you understand the problem that they have... The hierarchy of messaging is really important as well... you want to reflect back what they said they care about, not what you think is the coolest thing about your product."

— Gia Laudi    "I think one of the things I learned right away... was that designers don't want to hear from marketers... You use a word like efficiency, collaboration, all of those buzzwords, and they're just like, 'I don't want to hear this.'"

— Claire Butler        4 Apply the 'bar test' for natural language  Pretend to be someone in your target having drinks with another person in your target. You should be able to say, 'I just started using [product]. It's this really great [category] that [benefit].' Avoid words like 'leverages' or 'empowers' in favor of descriptive, conversational verbs.

Featured guest perspectives

"The bar test... you pretend to be someone in your target, having drinks with someone else in your target at a bar and you have to be able to say, hey, I just started using product name. It's this really great category, that benefit."

— Arielle Jackson        5 Keep positioning flexible early, then lock it in  In the early days, keep positioning loose to allow market discovery. Treat it as a thesis, not a fact. Once you've found traction with a specific segment, lock in the positioning and ensure it's consistent across all touchpoints. Force word-for-word alignment with founders.

Featured guest perspectives

"I actually think it's better in the early days of a product to keep the positioning a little bit loose and allow the market to pull you maybe in a direction that you didn't think it was going to."

— April Dunford    "I remember there was more than one day where we locked ourselves in a conference room and I made Dylan and show at the time have this positioning up on the big screen and made them agree on it word for word."

— Claire Butler

✗ Common Mistakes

Using corporate jargon and buzzwords instead of natural customer languageDefining positioning based on what you wish your customers were rather than who they actually areTrying to position against competitors instead of the status quoHaving 10 different people give 10 different descriptions of the company     ✓ Signs You're Doing It Well

Customers and employees consistently describe your product the same waySales calls feel like 'pull' rather than 'push'customers drive next stepsMarketing resonates immediately without needing extensive explanationYou can describe the product naturally in a conversation, not just a pitch deck

All Guest Perspectives

Deep dive into what all 58 guests shared about positioning & messaging.

Adam Grenier 1 quote

Listen to episode →

"The other one that I think is less known or talked about is the gift of details. So, in a scene, if you give somebody really specific details about something, it gives so much more meat to be able to work off of... if I say, 'We create content that is both education and entertainment to solve people's deep curiosities in the way that maybe a biography would.' That just opens up the exact problem that you're trying to solve."  Tactical:  Use specific analogies (like 'biographies') to anchor the value propositionProvide 'meat' in descriptions to help customers understand the exact problem being solved

View all skills from Adam Grenier →

Andy Raskin 3 quotes

Listen to episode →

"The traditional structure, the way I learned how to pitch in business school, I think the way most people did is what I call the arrogant doctor. So you have a problem, a pain, I have a solution, a treatment, and I'm going to tell you why it's better than all the other treatment."  Tactical:  Avoid the 'arrogant doctor' pitch structure of problem/solution/betterment.    "Every movie starts with some kind of shift in the world, and I call this shift the shift from the old game to a new game. The archetypal example of this, I think in the business world, is what Benioff did with Salesforce. So he comes in and he says, 'Hey, software is over and there's this new world called the cloud, a new game, new rules.'"  Tactical:  Define the shift from an 'old game' to a 'new game' with new rules.Name the old game and the new game concisely (e.g., 'Software' vs. 'Cloud').    "What's really, I think key is naming it, naming that old game... This very, very concise naming is really key. And it's hard because in making it compact you're losing completeness... we're always kind of overstating it in a way, but it's not a problem."  Tactical:  Name the shift using simple contrasts (e.g., 'Transactions' to 'Subscriptions' or 'Opinions' to 'Reality').

View all skills from Andy Raskin →

Anuj Rathi 1 quote

Listen to episode →

"How do I actually now empathize with this lazy, selfish, and vain customer, and build my product in a way so that I can make this appear on your site like this is the thing that you have to use, the way you write your copy, the way you build your onboarding, the way you do your first warm welcome?"  Tactical:  Connect marketing messages directly to the p