How do you explain the difference between positioning and messaging to internal stakeholders?

Positioning is the precursor to messaging.  If you don't know who your product is for, what it's good for and how it's different from other products in its space, then it will be very hard to come up with viable messaging.  Put another way, positioning is the primitive, typically expressed as an internal statement (see question above re: Geoffrey Moore's framework), whereas messaging is a set of derivative assets, typically copy and value statements that help suit the needs of different channels ...Read More

I'd describe positioning as how we want to be perceived in the market, and messaging as the customer-facing language that proves it. But in practice, I've rarely (if ever) had this specific conversation at Momentive outside of PMM: it tends to be pretty marketing-centric. What I've learned from internal stakeholders is that what's most important to them is to be able to look at a messaging document and know what's internal framework vs. something they can use in external-facing materials, so we ...Read More

I generally anchor to the time-horizon and the purpose. Borrowing from April Dunford, positioning is "context setting for prospects." Once you've established your positioning (which takes time, especially if you're pre-product market fit!), you need to be consistent over a relatively long timeframe, think 3+ years. Positioning answers the value you deliver to your ideal customer, through what differentiated capabilities, and in contrast to what competitors within a particular category. Messaging ...Read More

One thing I've seen work is positioning "positioning" as business strategy or a business plan versus marketing "words" we want people to think about and use. Positioning is the company's strategy — based on research and expertise — for who we're going after (e.g., sales teams) with what category of product (scheduling automation) to solve what problems or address what jobs to be done (qualify, route, and schedule meetings via the marketing website) to achieve a business outcomes (shorten the sal ...Read More