The growth marketers guide to positioning

Introduction

Positioning describes how you show the world what your product or service does and why it matters to the people you serve. It goes beyond basic statements of features. Instead, it guides your audience to see why you stand out and why you’re the best choice for their needs.

In this article, we’ll walk through the fundamentals of positioning, with insights from experts like April Dunford, and explain why it’s essential for growth marketers. You’ll learn to clarify exactly who you’re for, how you provide unique value, and how that translates into more effective marketing and meaningful growth.

What Is Positioning?

According to positioning specialist April Dunford, ‘Positioning defines how your product is a leader at delivering something that a well-defined set of customers cares a lot about.’ You can see her visual take on this concept in this image.

In practice, positioning answers questions like: Who is your ideal customer? What value sets you apart in their eyes? Who are the alternatives? And how do you show that you win? By knitting together these answers, you create a clear narrative that helps potential buyers see why your offer is the best fit for what they need.

For more detail, check out April Dunford’s quickstart guide to positioning.

Why Focus On Positioning?

Positioning matters because it shapes so many aspects of your marketing and product strategy:

• It clarifies which customers you can serve most effectively and how to segment your market.

• It highlights the unique benefits of your product or service, aligning your roadmap with customer needs.

• It evolves naturally over time, giving early-stage ventures a way to learn from different customer segments, then refine the message.

When you take charge of how people see you rather than leaving it up to chance, you stand out as the obvious choice for the audience that cares about your strengths.

Five Components Of Great Positioning

A strong positioning framework typically includes the following:

• Competitive Alternatives: What else might customers use instead of your product?

• Unique Features: Which elements of your solution are exclusive to you?

• Benefits: How do these features translate into direct value for your target audience?

• Maniacal Fans: Which customers get the most value out of your offer, and what is different aboutthem?

• Category Definition: In which market category do you want to be the go-to solution?

These components guide you toward how to communicate your central points of difference. For more depth on meaningful differentiation, visit Harnessing The Power Of Differentiated Value.

Competitive Alternatives

Your audience always weighs you against something else—be it a competing product, a manual method, or doing nothing. If you don’t define how you compare, potential customers will do it themselves, and you may lose control over their perceptions. Pinpointing your true competitors and articulating why you’re better sets a solid starting point for your positioning.

Differentiated Value

This is the glue that bonds positioning to sales messaging. It’s the unique value you offer and why that value matters. Even if a feature is totally distinct, you still need to show customers why it should matter to them. Apply a simple ‘so what?’ test: each feature should directly connect to a benefit or goal your customer truly cares about.

Real-world proof, such as testimonials or metrics, then validates that value in a tangible way.

Positioning And Pricing

Positioning and pricing go hand in hand. When you’re seen as the best at solving a high-stakes problem—one your customers measure in pounds and pence—they’re more willing to pay a premium. As pointed out in this article, aligning your solution with how customers already gauge success (like boosting revenue or reducing risk) gives you a clear way to justify cost.

Positioning And Target Customer

To find your ideal fit, think about the segment that cares most about the value you provide. That could be an industry, a technology stack, or the maturity level of a marketing team. It might seem tempting to go broad, but narrowing in on those who need your solution most helps build early momentum and ensures you’re investing in the right audience.

Positioning And Market Categories

If your category is mature (for example, email marketing or CRM software), highlight what makes your product faster, easier, or better than existing choices. If you’re creating a new category, show how you solve a problem customers might not fully recognise yet, and explain why they should care. Defining your category helps set buyer expectations and frames how they should compare your offering to what they know.

How Growth Method Helps

A big part of successful positioning is coordinating your ideas, experiments, data, and reporting. Growth Method is the only work management platform built for growth marketers, bringing together everything you need from hypothesis creation to final stakeholder reports. This all-in-one Growth Marketing OS helps you focus on executing and refining your positioning instead of juggling multiple disconnected tools.

Here’s how Growth Method supports an effective growth function:

• Ideation: Our intuitive system collects ideas that follow hypothesis best practices. Submissions are auto-categorised and shared with your team for fast feedback.

• Experimentation: We include best-practice workflows to run and track experiments through clear phases—building, live, analysing, and complete. This speeds up learnings and drives a more strategic marketing approach.

• Reporting: Impress decision-makers with sleek reports that display your strategy, goals, projections, and experiment outcomes. Demonstrating the impact of growth marketing becomes straightforward and transparent.

At Growth Method, we believe a marketing platform should free you to focus on execution, not slow you down with needless complexity. Our customers see real gains in productivity and performance. As Laura Perrott from Colt Technology Services puts it:

‘We are on-track to deliver a 43% increase in inbound leads this year. There is no doubt the adoption of Growth Method is the primary driver behind these results.’

We also provide AI-powered categorisation, integration with major analytics platforms, expert human support, and a free white-glove migration service. With Growth Method, you get the tools you need to position effectively and sustainably grow.

Next Steps

Positioning affects everything from how you talk about your business to what you build next. Now is the time to refine your positioning and build everything else around that strong core. If you want a single platform that helps you put these principles into practice, book a call today to see how Growth Method can help you implement a systematic approach to growth.