What is the difference between messaging and positioning?

I like to think about positioning as the internal facing framework of how you want your sellers to perceive, understand and feel about your product. Positioning informs your messaging. It can reflect the vision for your product, key differentiators, and defines what your product is. Messaging is external facing - how your positioning comes to life with the actual messaging in the market. The key value props that are compelling to your customers can be thematic while the messaging itself is how t ...Read More

This is a fun one that I've spent many hours chatting about with folks. Positioning is more of a high level concept about where you fit into your target audiences head in a different way than anyone else, Messaging is more about how you say that position to the target audience. Let's take a made-up example: Let's say I market an organic dog food that has no processed ingredients and sustainable packaging. (there's an eating your own dogfood joke here but i digress) Positioning = The only dog foo ...Read More

Positioning is an internal exercise during which you define the unique value proposition for your product, how the product is differentiated from the competition, and where it sits relative to the competition/alternatives in consumer’s minds. Positioning is a building block for messaging. Messaging is customer-facing articulation of the product’s value proposition. Messaging is the building blocks of all customer-facing language whether it’s on your site, your pitch decks, or your ads. In genera ...Read More

Positioning and messaging both help you explain the value you deliver. I've always thought of positioning as something that lives internally within a company to help the organization contextualize their product or service within their category. It's the strategy by which you choose to communicate your value. The messaging is the words they use to explain this to the outside world. The two are very related and in some companies with a mature offering, they may be mostly the same. For companies th ...Read More

For me, positioning is the statement about why/how your product is unique and why it is better than the competition. Messaging, on the other hand, is how you articulate (the words) the positioning to a specific audience/persona. The positioning your create for your product is really the foundation the messaging is built on.  To get buy-in with stakeholders, I really focus on starting wtih the positioning and getting sign-off from leadership on those key statements. Once there is alignment there, ...Read More

Most people talk about positioning and messaging under the same breath and interchangeably, but in fact, these are two very different things that have inter-dependencies. Positioning is contextual. It’s simply about your ownable market position. The goal is to answer “how are you unique?” And “how do you want to be perceived in the market?” In practice, this is your core value proposition - and you can find a plethora of templates online for this. Messaging on the other hand is about how you com ...Read More

I feel like every organization struggles with this. Everyone (and every function) brings their own definitions and biases with them.  Here is my definition of this: Positioning: This is the combination of audience definition, problem statement, product/category definition, and unique differentiation. Ideally can be summarized in a single statement (1-2 sentences) Messaging: A structured breakdown of the key pillars of your message, focused on an audience or launch. This is a framework that is us ...Read More

Great question - the difference can often be confusing to even marketers as well. I view positioning as the foundation to messaging. Your positioning should cover the following: Your target customer How your product fits into the market How your product differs from competitors Why it works Once you've researched and crafted the positioning to your product, your messaging is an extension and amplification of that core statement. Messaging then, should differ based on where it's landing (ads vs. ...Read More