How does one create a "positioning document?"

Our organization is focusing on a new customer segment and channel. My CMO has asked me to create a "positioning document" that we can share with senior leadership that articulates how we're going to market to this segment. Does anyone have a template or (and NDA-compliant) example document I could use as a model? Just trying to understand what type of information to include and how best to organize it. Thanks!

8 answers

All related (26)

Amey Kanade

Product Marketing at Fire TV (Smart TVs) at Amazon • February 17

I always start with defining the customer and then working backwards. 1. Define the customer: Based on the market data, I come up with a few personnas. Personnas makes is easier to tell a story and i

30 Saves

Ambika Aggarwal

Director of Product Marketing at Culture Amp • September 23

Here's what I like to put into a positioning doc: 1. What market are we in ? How big is this market (TAM)? What's our serviceable obtainable market (SOM) ? 2. What does the competitve landscape look

37 Saves

Sarah Din

VP of Product Marketing at Quickbase • August 12

I like to keep these simple, and just use a single value proposition slide. Especially when it’s for an executive team. Here are the basic things to include: Who is our audience? (customer segment) W

28 Saves

Grant Shirk

Head of Product Marketing, Cisco Meraki at Cisco Meraki | Formerly Tellme Networks, Microsoft, Box, Vera, Scout RFP, and Sisu Data, to name a few. • April 13

There are a number of templates available online. My first recommendation is to confirm your CMO's expecation - it's rare for a CMO to *not* have a favorite format for this. However, if they are tru

22 Saves

Jeffrey Vocell

VP of Product Marketing at | Formerly Narvar, Iterable, HubSpot, IBM • August 3

There are ton's of different templates available, a quick Google search will turn up dozens of positioning templates. This is a pretty good one I've used as a foundation previously. What's most impor

17 Saves

Leonardo Vergani

Latam Marketing Manager at ActiveCampaign • July 29

Hey, Intercom published a blogpost with their templates for everything related to Product Marketing, including a Positioning template. You can read the blogpost here: https://www.intercom.com/blog/h

80 Saves

Chris Glanzman

Director of Product Marketing & Demand Generation at ESO | Formerly Fortive • August 24

The core of the positioning document is the Positioning Statement. I've always been fairly prescriptive with how the Positioning Statement should come together. Here's the structure we follow: For (ta

16 Saves

Tracy Montour

Head of Product Marketing at HiredScore • July 28

Positioning is the foundational element of all product marketing work, which makes the positioning document pretty critical to the success of a launch/campaign/etc. Here is what I like to include in t

5 Saves

How do you access customers for research when an internal stakeholder group is "protective" of their clients?

How do you think about pricing and packaging as it relates to competitive positioning?

How often do you talk to customers, or do qualitative + VOC research?

What metric, goal or KPI can you put on providing competitive intelligence to the company or product teams?