Scroll down for the ‘Obviously, Awesome’ template by April Dunford.
Nine years ago, April Dunford’s positioning blog post blew up. So much so, that she wrote an entire book on the topic of product positioning. I’ve extracted the steps her framework uses to simplify, remove fluff, and strengthen positioning of your product.
Strong products often fail to gain traction because customers struggle to understand where they fit. Positioning solves this problem by providing the context that makes a product’s value immediately clear. When positioning is done well, the right customer can quickly recognize what the product is, who it is for, and why it is better than the alternatives.
Deliberate positioning on customer value
The first mistake many teams make is describing the product based on how it was originally built for a specific market rather than the problem it ultimately solves. Early narratives often stick long after the product has evolved. This leads to comparisons against the wrong competitors and causes buyers to misunderstand the product’s strengths. Effective positioning begins by abandoning this historical framing and instead defining the product in terms of the problem it solves today.
From there, the focus should shift to identifying the attributes that truly differentiate the product. Real differentiation usually comes from structural advantages—unique data, specialized expertise, technical architecture, distribution advantages, or a fundamentally different approach to solving the problem. The goal is to isolate the handful of qualities that make the product meaningfully distinct.
Customers don’t care about your unique features, they care what those features can do for them. Your positioning needs to be centred on the value that you alone can deliver for customers. - April Dunford
However, differentiation alone is not enough. Those attributes must be translated into value that customers actually care about. Buyers rarely evaluate products based on technical features; they evaluate them based on outcomes. Positioning therefore requires reframing capabilities in terms of the concrete benefits they enable—faster results, lower costs, better performance, reduced risk, or entirely new possibilities. When the connection between capability and customer value is clear, the product’s advantage becomes easier to understand.
Getting Specific, Narrowing the Focus
Another common positioning mistake is trying to appeal to everyone. Broad messaging often weakens the story because it ignores the reality that some customers experience a problem far more intensely than others. Strong positioning identifies the group that feels the problem most acutely and speaks directly to them. Narrowing the focus clarifies both the message and the product’s value.
Finally, positioning requires choosing the market context in which the product will be understood. The category or frame used to describe a product determines what customers compare it against and how they evaluate its value. If the category is poorly chosen, the product may appear weaker than it actually is. But when the right frame is selected, the product’s strengths become obvious and its advantages easier to appreciate.
Clarity and an Awesome Framework
Positioning, then, is less about persuasion and more about clarity. It aligns the product’s strengths with the needs of the customers who care most about them, and places the product in a context where those strengths are easy to recognize. When this alignment is achieved, the value of the product becomes self-evident. Customers no longer struggle to understand why it exists or whether it is relevant to them, and they immediately see where it fits and why it matters.
April’s quick framework for adapting your product positioning