How do you differentiate positioning from messaging? Which is important? How do you test each?

This is one of the most important (and most common) questions so thanks for asking it!

At the simplest - positioning is an articulation of what your company or product offers a target audience that differentiates it in the market it plays and is internal language while messaging brings this positioning to life in a compelling way that will (hopefully) make your target take a specific action. So they're both important.

Here's a bit more detail on how positioning and messaging differ/build on one another:

Positioning

• Addresses what your company/product can do for someone relative to a context that differentiates you from other choices

• Is internally facing so the language isn't customer facing

• Should involve a broad cross functional group to form it as it impacts everything a company does.

• Usually doesn't change for 12-18 months, depends on how active the category/market in which a company plays

• Typically you don't really test this but you use insights to inform it and push your team that the positioning isn't differentiated by seeing if any other company could claim what you have written

Messaging

• Describes the positioning in a way that resonates with the audience you're trying to reach

• Is therefore externally facing.

• Created by marketing

• Can be iterated frequently

• Can and should be tested - I usually find doing this in context of a landing page is easiest - by talking to current users, utilizing a customer advisory board or user research tools like User Testing and Maze

Both positioning and messaging should be grounded in deep customer insights but while you can (and in my opinion should test messaging with users) this isn't true for positioning.