How does competitive positioning relate to general positioning? What frameworks do you use to help the company understand the difference?

Competitive posititioning is a core element of product positioning. The primary architecture of brand and product-level positioning comes down to this: Audience: Who are you primarily building for and marketing to?  Pain/Enemy: What is their biggest pain point or problem? Solution: How do you address this problem? Differentiation: What makes your approach to solving this problem different and better? Urgency: Why is now an important right time to address this issue? Competitive positioning lives ...Read More

Competitive positioning is basically a zoomed in version of your overall positioning. If you think of a competitive matrix, your overall positioning puts you on the map. How you're positioned versus a specific competitor zooms into the matrix and describes your exact position relative to this one other specific data point. Also, all positioning is competitive in a world where you have competitors. Not everyone in your company will understand the difference and that's ok. When I think about enabl ...Read More

Positioning reflects what your company uniquely provides a specific audience in a particular market.  It shouldn’t require multiple facets like general and competitive positioning.   That said if you are finding that your audience is comparing you against one competitor in particular you can find ways to do comparisons on value, features, pricing, ROI, time to value, and other metrics in a direct comparison chart, through case studies or calculators, or with enablement to your sales team.  But y ...Read More

Ideally you are not basing your overall positioning based solely on how your competitors position themselves. That said, you (or more likely sales) will inevitably be asked for comparisons. The best approach to this is to have a solid set of unique value propositions (UVPs) for your company - these can be product related or include other things like services only you offer or industries you specialize in. Once you have these UVPs agreed on, then you can start to create some competitive positioni ...Read More

When your company only has one product, the product positioning is the company positioning. The next growth phase would be a portfolio of products. Say we are are the professional services cloud with one product for accountants another for consultants another for lawyers and finally one for bankers. Here the value offered by the product can differ to the value of the company or brand in other words. the idea should be 1+1+1+1=5. Finally, when you have multiple portfolios the issue becomes more o ...Read More

Both competitive positioning and general positioning start with the customer in a specific target market and the problem they face. Dig deep into the problem and understand why it hurts so bad.  General Positioning: In general positioning, you’re articulating how your product fits in the overall market (including partner vendors, competitors, etc.). It gives context to the customer in regards to how and when they would buy the product. Competitive Positioning: In competitive positioning, you're ...Read More