Zoom In to Stand Out: How Positioning and Messaging Clarify What Makes You Different
WRITTEN By Fluvio consultant, Colin Kemp
In the long-standing debate on what’s in and what’s out of a product marketer’s scope of responsibilities, positioning and messaging remain our safe wheelhouse, the core around which the others revolve.
Unfortunately, for too many non-product marketers, positioning and messaging are in the same mental bucket as collateral or pitch decks or web copy. Positioning and messaging too often get characterized as a fancy method product marketers use to get at the materials they need.
Whole books and lecture circuits have been created on positioning and messaging respectively. In this post, I’ll focus on how positioning and messaging deliver on the cumulative value of the Fluvio GTM Framework. We’ll look at the ultimate impact, the prerequisites for success, and some practical advice on developing them as a cross-functional muscle in your launches.
BEGIN WITH THE END IN MIND
Let’s first begin with the end in mind in the broadest possible terms: how does the work of positioning and messaging turn into cross-functional value for your product launch?
Imagine today is the last day of your company’s Big Product launch. The outcomes ideal for your company and your new Big Product launch could include:
Increasing sales velocity because sales teams are ready to empathize with prospects on their key pain points and articulate efficiently the most compelling ways in which your new offering meets their needs.
Marketing teams generating content that attracts the most attention in all the channels and audiences in your ideal customer profile (ICP), building demand to fill the funnel.
Customer success teams convincing customers to expand their investment with you, in the ways that appeal to their unique problems and historical successes.
All other cross-functional teams aware of and ready to talk about the Big Product in a consistent, focused way that reinforces the added value the company provides.
Leadership teams assured that the Big Thing is ready to deliver value to customers and revenue to the company.
No one is making it up on the fly. Everyone contributes to a feedback loop back to product marketing, to enrich and improve the positioning and messaging foundation as new information is learned after Big Product is launched.
When executed systematically, positioning and messaging are initiatives in your GTM strategy that highlight value, like a camera lens with progressive focus, helping buyers see your unique value easier, faster and in a way that’s more memorable over time.
POSITIONING AND MESSAGING DEFINED
Too often positioning and messaging are mumbled together as if a compound word, typically skipping past the work of positioning to actually mean messaging.
Don’t do this. Acknowledge that positioning and messaging are two, distinct activities. Each do work to frame and narrow that lens of your Big Product’s value story.
Positioning is the act of creating associations in customers’ minds to make them perceive your brand or product in a specific way. Positioning strategies help shape buyer preferences, which are directly linked to loyalty, brand equity, and the willingness to purchase products and services. As April Dunford, positioning guru and author of “Obviously Awesome” describes, “positioning defines how your product is the best in the world at delivering something that a well-defined set of customers cares a lot about.”
Messaging is the set of key statements that convey how your product delivers value to customers that internal teams can understand, repurpose, and ultimately use to amplify to customers and broader market.
Together, the outputs of positioning and messaging work to ensure alignment across teams, resulting in consistent and impactful communication.
BEFORE POSITIONING AND MESSAGING: PREREQUISITES
Getting positioning and messaging right for your Big Product launch requires laying a foundation – there is, unfortunately, no shortcut.
The Fluvio GTM Model reinforces the principle of interlocking activities driven by a core team you form at the inception of any new product or feature launch. The cumulative effect of each activity makes the others easier and more streamlined in service to the bigger product launch objectives.
Creating world-class positioning and messaging requires first establishing your market opportunity, describing the competitive landscape, and defining your ICP and personas. This gives you the context to flesh out your messaging and positioning.
Of course, depending upon the tier of your launch, you may choose to narrow the scope of a step like market research, or tailor the number of competitors in a market, but getting these items right make the work of positioning and messaging substantially easier, more rooted in data, and more supported by cross-functional consensus.
MAKING POSITIONING ACTIONABLE
WIth the foundation work out of the way, it’s now time to synthesize research into tangible insights that help identify the key points of differentiation for your company and product(s), and align them with market trends and the needs and desires of your ICP and personas.
It’s time to do the actual work of positioning.
You’ll accomplish this with your launch team, collectively aiming to answer the essential questions that capture your unique positioning – in a working session that extracts these foundational answers.
WHY. Why do we exist? What is our core reason for being?
Though seemingly existential, this SImon Sinek-inspired question holds practical weight, as your product positioning needs to start with a clarity of motivation. What role does your product launch play in improving the business performance of your customers or the daily lives of your users? What purpose propels the collective intentions of your team to make that happen? This tends to be one of the ingredients of your key difference in the market.
HOW. How we uniquely deliver on our why?
In what way does your new solution, process or product fulfill your ‘Why”? How is it possible that you’re more capable than others in the market? What’s the “secret sauce” in your product or company that sets you apart – and is most difficult to replicate. This could be expertise, process, packaging or market focus, so encourage your team to capture a broad inventory of ideas to avoid the positioning “blinders” that limit how you highlight value to customers.
WHAT. What do we do, in one sentence.
Use this step to cut through the jargon and complexity, focusing the lens of your positioning work on something simple, short and memorable.
WHO. Who are we for? What market and ideal customer?
You’ve defined your ICP already, so why is this step necessary? Identifying and understanding those customers who truly love you helps push through one of the biggest challenges of tightening up product positioning – faulty assumptions. Customers who love you might do so because you’re meeting a unique set of needs not considered, or at some point devalued. Use this step to both test your ICP and the underlying sources of current customer affinity.
DIFFERENCE. What makes us different compared to competitors or other alternatives. This step is yet another assumptions-killer and serves as a review of the Fluvio GTM Model steps that came before. Have you discussed – as a positioning team – the research, ICP, personas, and competition, challenging assumptions about past positioning? Have you always thought of yourselves as an “x” provider? Have you only served the “y” market? Did customers in interviews or recorded sales calls offer perspectives that were outliers worth understanding?
BUILDING THE MESSAGE FRAMEWORK
You’ve done actual positioning. Great job! Now the work begins.
You’ll find that with a collective alignment across your Launch Team on the key questions of positioning, the creation of messaging will flow faster than you can say “frictionless” (but please don’t).
Positioning’s a Lens, Messaging's a Prism
Collectively narrowing the focus of your value message in positioning sets you up perfectly for the prism of messaging. With effective positioning, everyone’s clear on what makes you different. Now your message framework can do the work of helping a wider range of audiences understand your value in their varied contexts. Effective messaging is important because it…
Aligns internal teams on key talking points and naming conventions.
Addresses the key pain points that make your product relevant.
Highlights the benefits and outcomes that matter to customers.
Emphasizes differentiation versus competitors.
Identifies proof points (testimonials, real use cases, quotes, data points) that support your story.
Allows for diversified strategies that can speak to different segments’ needs.
The Nuts and Bolts of Your Messaging Framework
Building your message framework systematically will ensure you’re interlocked with the work already completed in your positioning.
Who is the “user” of the messaging framework? All of your cross-functional teams from sales to demand gen to other cross-functional teams like customer success and implementations. Everyone needs a toolbox to tell the story of Big Product.
Here are the key tools in your toolbox:
Value Proposition. A clear statement that explains the unique value your product or service delivers to customers and why it stands out from competitors.
Customer Pain Points. The specific challenges, frustrations, or unmet needs that your target audience experiences and seeks to resolve.
Outcomes. The desired state or result that customers hope to achieve by using your product or service.
Product Benefits. The tangible advantage or positive impact that a customer gains from using your product or service.
Supporting Features. A specific functionality or attribute of your product that enables its benefits and helps solve customer pain points.
CONCLUSION
Positioning and messaging are far more than polished copy or slide fodder — they are strategic instruments that define how your product competes and connects. When rooted in rigorous insight and crafted with cross-functional input, positioning tells the market why you matter, while messaging arms every team with the clarity to articulate how you deliver that value. Together, they fuel not just a successful product launch but a cohesive go-to-market engine.
Whether you’re launching a disruptive innovation or refreshing an established product, investing the time to build a strong positioning and messaging foundation will accelerate alignment, shorten sales cycles, and deepen customer trust. Done right, these aren’t just marketing outputs. They are revenue enablers and long-term strategic assets.