Tech Product Positioning Done Right

Product positioning is meant to capture and clearly articulate the differentiated value proposition of a product in a way that motivates buyers to act and empowers revenue teams to win, retain and grow customers. In other words, product positioning is the internal statement of strategy.  

Tech products (tangible products, services or solutions delivered as a service) require a detailed level of positioning, particularly when it comes to customer needs, so while product positioning is a well-understood aspect of go-to-market activities, many tech marketers still struggle to develop an easy-to-understand, detailed and differentiated story for their products and solutions. 

Too often, for example, target prospect profiles are loosely defined, making it appear as if the vendor’s solution applies to anyone, anywhere. Or tech marketers focus only on the technology and not the business problem it solves — when the solution is what’s most critical to the target buyer. 

These are among the most common product positioning failures:

• No link between the buyer’s needs and key benefits or most compelling reason to buy. The “who” is the buying entity that needs your product or solution, which should connect to the “that” statement that demonstrates resolution. And the “that” statement should omit benefits not directly related to the customer’s business challenge or needs.

• Lack of insight into the target customer or buying team at an enterprise level. Organizations often buy B2B technology products and services through a buying committee made up of members from IT, security, legal, finance and lines of business. Product positioning should speak to enterprise business needs, not the individual people being sold to.

Marketing messages are often ineffective in connecting with tech buyers. Typical shortcomings include: 

• Failing to provide context so customers don’t see how they fit within the story in terms of their situation, problems and opportunities. 

• Relying too heavily on features and specifications, rather than citing customer examples and creating emotional connections — which can lead to customer mistrust and delayed purchases.

• Attempting to deliver all aspects of a go-to-market message at once, overwhelming buyers and leading them to disengage from buying journeys.

Use storytelling techniques, driven by your positioning statement, to help you connect customer situations to product/service capabilities and outcomes. Align those storylines to the questions that buyers need answered, taking into account specific audience requirements.

Storytelling is more than just crafting catchy messaging. Devise them rigorously, using the Gartner recommended model: outcome, situation, impact and resolution:

1. Outcome — Lead with the business or experiential benefits that can be obtained by the client. While this seems backward, buyers are inherently self-interested and are looking for clear and concise descriptions of what you will be able to do for them. Tie these outcomes to real-world data when possible to drive reader interest and to ground the results in reality.

2. Situation — Failure setting up a case study usually means a lack of clarity about the client being helped, the nature of the problem they experienced or a lack of focus on the client altogether. This first section of the narrative should introduce the main characters, including minimal biographical information about the company, as well as the challenges they face. The focus should remain on the client and ideally the vendor should not be mentioned until the next story element.

2. Impact — Authors often confuse the impact with the situation, and fail to extrapolate the larger business value lost due to the effects of the problems stated. For example, a case study that points to a feature, stating “Company X wanted to migrate to the cloud,” is much less impactful than one that points to a value, with “Company X needed to reduce capex and improve collaboration, and chose to move to the cloud.” In the latter example, the impact of the previously described situation becomes much clearer.

3. Resolution — A successful resolution, the final element of a narrative, has two distinct parts: the tactical improvements made by the vendor to create change, and what the business outcomes of that change are. The resolution loses clarity when the former is missing, and loses power when the latter is absent. It is essential to cover both the changes made by the organization as well as the positive outcomes. These should also mirror the challenges established in the situation, completing the narrative while leaving no idea planted without a payoff.

The "R" segment of a “situation-impact-resolution” story should include customer testimonials/case studies to answer questions like, “What is it like to work with the vendor? What does a successful implementation look like?"

Real-life customer case stories are the surest way to be authentic in your storytelling, but case studies often fall short of their promise to persuade readers through example. For example:

• Case studies often either leave out elements essential to the story or confuse a case study with a list of use cases.

• Lack of specificity also makes them seem suspect and lack relevance, and trying to use one case study for multiple purposes leaves the take-aways unclear.

• Using case studies to define the value proposition rather than reinforce it, causes organizations to lose control of their own narrative.

• Case studies often fail to provide the next best action for their audience, wasting the positive impact of a well-told story.

If you want to make authentic stories even more believable, show quantifiable impact. Buyers will more likely believe you if you can attach values to specific situations and outcomes — especially if they are linked to customer examples. 

One of the most important benefits of storytelling is that it creates an environment for emotional connections. The human brain uses emotions and previous experiences to remember; they don’t remember lists of features or facts. 

To create a good product-value stories:

1. Craft a complete client-focused narrative, rather than an example scenario, by including all stages: situation, challenge, impact and resolution.

2. Focus the narrative on supporting one key aspect of the value proposition by being as specific as possible instead of trying to speak to everything at once.

3. Use the story explored in the case study to support the defined value proposition, rather than having the case study define it.

4. Guide the reader of the case study to their next best action to move them along the marketing funnel.