Article · 12 min read

A Quickstart Guide to Positioning

April Dunford · aprildunford.com Free Beginner

The clearest short explanation of why market category is one of five interdependent positioning pieces, with a real repositioning story attached. It is also where Dunford makes the case that most companies should not invent a category.

  • Positioning has five components: competitive alternatives, differentiated features, value, target segment, market category.
  • Always start from competitive alternatives, or you get positioning that sounds good internally but is not differentiated.
  • 90 percent of tech companies that IPO'd in the past five years were positioned in existing markets, not new ones.
  • Dunford's own repositioning took a product from under 2M dollars to close to 80M dollars in 18 months.
Open on aprildunford.com ↗

It answers 7 questions

  1. What is positioning in plain English, and why does everyone insist we have got it wrong?
  2. What does category actually mean in go-to-market, and why does everyone keep telling me to pick one?
  3. How do I write a one-line description of what we do that a normal person actually understands?
  4. Should we create a new category or just say we are a better version of something that already exists?
  5. How do I write the one line that says what category we are in?
  6. When is category creation the right call for us, and when is it just an excuse?
  7. What does a world class product marketing function look like, and when does a company need one?

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  2. Their public teardowns and positioning strategies are the fastest way to see the same product framed four or five different... fletchpmm.com Tool · Browse FletchPMM: Homepage Positioning for B2B Software Startups Anthony Pierri and Robert Kaminski
  3. The clearest single hour on how positioning, segmentation and personas differ and how they connect to the sales call. Dunford... Lenny's Podcast Podcast · ~60 min April Dunford on product positioning, segmentation, and optimizing your sales process April Dunford
  4. A five step exercise you can actually run in a room this week, ending in the market frame of reference that makes your... aprildunford.com Article · ~12 min read A Product Positioning Exercise April Dunford
  5. The most complete plain-language description of what a PMM owns, and it is explicit that positioning and messaging is the... Product Marketing Alliance Article · ~20 min read What is Product Marketing? The 2026 Guide Product Marketing Alliance
  6. The SuperOps founder frames GTM around one question, is your category established or new, which is exactly the fork in the road... Prime Venture Partners Podcast Podcast · ~50 min SaaS Deep Dives: PMF, GTM and Maverick Marketing with Arvind Parthiban Arvind Parthiban
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