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Positioning · checked 11 November 2026

Positioning is the context that makes your strengths look obvious: what kind of thing this is and who it is for. Start from the buyer's alternative.

Name a category a stranger already knows before anything clever, and stay inside an existing category unless buyers truly have no box for you. Against a big incumbent, go after a frustration its own customers voice, never the vendor. Tagline, website and pitch all come after positioning, so settle it first and test new messaging rather than argue about it.

Every question on it 45 answers

  1. What is positioning in plain English, and why does everyone insist we have got it wrong? GTM
  2. How do I position my startup so people instantly 'get' it? Starting Up
  3. What does category actually mean in go-to-market, and why does everyone keep telling me to pick one? GTM
  4. Should we create a new category or just say we are a better version of something that already exists? GTM
  5. How do I write the one line that says what category we are in? GTM
  6. Buyers keep comparing us to a big incumbent. How do I even respond in a first call? GTM
  7. How do I test whether a category name lands before we commit the whole website to it? GTM
  8. We named the problem instead of the product. Is that a positioning mistake? GTM
  9. Our competitor's category is bigger and better funded. How do I carve out a segment we can actually win? GTM
  10. What do I actually change when we reposition? Website, deck, pricing, all of it? GTM
  11. When is category creation the right call for us, and when is it just an excuse? GTM
  12. How do I fund and staff a category play without starving pipeline? GTM
  13. When should we start talking to Gartner and Forrester, and what do we actually say? GTM
  14. How do I tell if the category is working, or if we are just talking to ourselves? GTM
  15. How did Gong actually create revenue intelligence, step by step? GTM
  16. What did HubSpot and Salesforce do that most category attempts do not? GTM
  17. How do the best teams pick the category name, and what separates a name that sticks? GTM
  18. How do the best Indian companies compete against a US incumbent without pretending to be American? GTM
  19. What is a strategic narrative and how is it different from our pitch deck? GTM
  20. US buyers hesitate when they learn we are an India based team. How do I handle that in our messaging? GTM
  21. How do I build a narrative the whole company tells the same way? GTM
  22. How do I write positioning and messaging that speaks to just my beachhead without sounding tiny to investors? Starting Up
  23. How do I position against a bigger, better-funded competitor? Starting Up
  24. When a big competitor announces they're building the exact feature I'm known for, what do I actually do? Starting Up
  25. The category I like is already crowded with brands. Can I still differentiate and win? D2C
  26. What's actually the difference between positioning, branding and differentiation - and which one do I need to nail first? D2C
  27. The category I want to enter already has ten funded brands doing the same thing - how do I find a real wedge? D2C
  28. Should I try to create a whole new category like 'bed in a box' did, or just fight for share in an existing one? D2C
  29. My product solves a problem people don't like to talk about (hygiene, intimacy, mental health) - how do I position it without scaring off buyers? D2C
  30. A bigger brand just copied my positioning almost word for word - what do I actually do about it? D2C
  31. What does a world class product marketing function look like, and when does a company need one? GTM
  32. How do I write a one-line description of what we do that a normal person actually understands? GTM
  33. Our positioning reads fine on the website but every rep says something different on calls. How do I fix that? GTM
  34. We are changing our positioning. How do I roll it out without breaking the pipeline mid-quarter? GTM
  35. Do we need to create a new category, or should we position inside one that already exists? GTM
  36. How do the best B2B companies get positioning agreed when product, sales and the founders all disagree? GTM
  37. What is the actual difference between positioning, messaging and copy? I keep being asked for all three and they feel like the same job. GTM
  38. Everyone we sell to already uses the big incumbent. How do I position against them without trashing them? GTM
  39. Everyone has an opinion on our new messaging and nobody can settle the argument. How do I test it instead? GTM
  40. We have three products now. Do we message them separately or tell one platform story? GTM
  41. A big share of our losses are to nobody at all. How do the best companies write and sell against doing nothing? GTM
  42. We pivoted, but the market still knows us for the old thing. How do we reposition without losing the customers we already have? GTM
  43. What did Slack's "We don't sell saddles here" memo actually change about how they sold? GTM
  44. What does April Dunford say most teams get wrong about positioning? GTM
  45. Why do the best operators design a category instead of competing inside one? GTM

The readingMost used across these answers

The terms

PositioningValue PropositionUnique Selling Proposition

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