oldwinter Positioning & Messaging
Category: Marketing
Source: https://refoundai.com/lenny-skills/s/positioning-messaging
Positioning & Messaging | Refound AI
Lenny Skills Database SKILLS PLAYBOOKS GUESTS ABOUT SKILLS PLAYBOOKS GUESTS ABOUT Marketing 58 guests | 106 insights
Positioning & Messaging Positioning defines the space your product occupies in the customer's mind and determines how they describe it to others. Weak positioning creates friction throughout the sales funnel; strong positioning makes customers feel understood and compelled to act. Focus on differentiated value against real alternatives, use the customer's own language, and test messaging like a product.
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The Guide 5 key steps synthesized from 58 experts.
1 Define your competitive alternatives first Positioning starts with understanding what customers would do if your product didn't exist. This includes direct competitors, adjacent solutions, and the status quo (spreadsheets, manual labor). List features unique to your product versus those alternatives, then ask 'so what?' for each to uncover actual value.
Featured guest perspectives
"Differentiated value is the answer to the question why pick us over the other alternatives? And so the way we get at that in positioning is we start with putting a stake in the ground of who do we actually compete with?"
— April Dunford "Positioning is the space that you occupy in your target customer's mind and everything you can do to influence how they describe your product. You have a positioning problem if I ask 10 of your customers or 10 of your employees what the company does... and I get multiple answers."
— Arielle Jackson 2 Frame the shift from old game to new game Effective positioning frames your product as a response to a fundamental shift in the market paradigm. Name the old game and the new game concisely (e.g., 'Software' vs. 'Cloud', 'Transactions' vs. 'Subscriptions'). This creates urgency and positions you as the leader of a movement.
Featured guest perspectives
"Every movie starts with some kind of shift in the world, and I call this shift the shift from the old game to a new game. The archetypal example... is what Benioff did with Salesforce. So he comes in and he says, 'Hey, software is over and there's this new world called the cloud, a new game, new rules.'"
— Andy Raskin 3 Use your customers' own language Effective messaging 'reflects customers back to them,' proving you understand their problem. Conduct extensive customer conversations to hear their specific language. Avoid buzzwords like 'efficiency' or 'collaboration' when targeting practitioners; use technical features and craft-based language instead.
Featured guest perspectives
"You want to reflect them back to them. That is what is going to show them that you understand the problem that they have... The hierarchy of messaging is really important as well... you want to reflect back what they said they care about, not what you think is the coolest thing about your product."
— Gia Laudi "I think one of the things I learned right away... was that designers don't want to hear from marketers... You use a word like efficiency, collaboration, all of those buzzwords, and they're just like, 'I don't want to hear this.'"
— Claire Butler 4 Apply the 'bar test' for natural language Pretend to be someone in your target having drinks with another person in your target. You should be able to say, 'I just started using [product]. It's this really great [category] that [benefit].' Avoid words like 'leverages' or 'empowers' in favor of descriptive, conversational verbs.
Featured guest perspectives
"The bar test... you pretend to be someone in your target, having drinks with someone else in your target at a bar and you have to be able to say, hey, I just started using product name. It's this really great category, that benefit."
— Arielle Jackson 5 Keep positioning flexible early, then lock it in In the early days, keep positioning loose to allow market discovery. Treat it as a thesis, not a fact. Once you've found traction with a specific segment, lock in the positioning and ensure it's consistent across all touchpoints. Force word-for-word alignment with founders.
Featured guest perspectives
"I actually think it's better in the early days of a product to keep the positioning a little bit loose and allow the market to pull you maybe in a direction that you didn't think it was going to."
— April Dunford "I remember there was more than one day where we locked ourselves in a conference room and I made Dylan and show at the time have this positioning up on the big screen and made them agree on it word for word."
— Claire Butler
✗ Common Mistakes
Using corporate jargon and buzzwords instead of natural customer languageDefining positioning based on what you wish your customers were rather than who they actually areTrying to position against competitors instead of the status quoHaving 10 different people give 10 different descriptions of the company ✓ Signs You're Doing It Well
Customers and employees consistently describe your product the same waySales calls feel like 'pull' rather than 'push'customers drive next stepsMarketing resonates immediately without needing extensive explanationYou can describe the product naturally in a conversation, not just a pitch deck
All Guest Perspectives
Deep dive into what all 58 guests shared about positioning & messaging.
Adam Grenier 1 quote
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"The other one that I think is less known or talked about is the gift of details. So, in a scene, if you give somebody really specific details about something, it gives so much more meat to be able to work off of... if I say, 'We create content that is both education and entertainment to solve people's deep curiosities in the way that maybe a biography would.' That just opens up the exact problem that you're trying to solve." Tactical: Use specific analogies (like 'biographies') to anchor the value propositionProvide 'meat' in descriptions to help customers understand the exact problem being solved
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Andy Raskin 3 quotes
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"The traditional structure, the way I learned how to pitch in business school, I think the way most people did is what I call the arrogant doctor. So you have a problem, a pain, I have a solution, a treatment, and I'm going to tell you why it's better than all the other treatment." Tactical: Avoid the 'arrogant doctor' pitch structure of problem/solution/betterment. "Every movie starts with some kind of shift in the world, and I call this shift the shift from the old game to a new game. The archetypal example of this, I think in the business world, is what Benioff did with Salesforce. So he comes in and he says, 'Hey, software is over and there's this new world called the cloud, a new game, new rules.'" Tactical: Define the shift from an 'old game' to a 'new game' with new rules.Name the old game and the new game concisely (e.g., 'Software' vs. 'Cloud'). "What's really, I think key is naming it, naming that old game... This very, very concise naming is really key. And it's hard because in making it compact you're losing completeness... we're always kind of overstating it in a way, but it's not a problem." Tactical: Name the shift using simple contrasts (e.g., 'Transactions' to 'Subscriptions' or 'Opinions' to 'Reality').
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Anuj Rathi 1 quote
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"How do I actually now empathize with this lazy, selfish, and vain customer, and build my product in a way so that I can make this appear on your site like this is the thing that you have to use, the way you write your copy, the way you build your onboarding, the way you do your first warm welcome?" Tactical: Connect marketing messages directly to the product onboarding experience to ensure a seamless narrative journey.Focus on one primary value proposition for new users rather than overwhelming them with the full suite of product features.Think like a 'full-stack influencer' who must persuade both internal teams and external users.
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April Dunford 6 quotes
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"Weak positioning hurts you in the early stages of pipeline in that people don't really get what you are, so they're not responding to your marketing the way they should. And you'll get this sluggishness in the middle of your pipeline, particularly if you have sales people. The light doesn't come on until they've had three calls with the sales rep and then the light comes on." Tactical: Monitor for 'sluggishness' in the middle of the sales pipelineListen for customers asking sales reps to 'back up and start over' during pitches "positioning defines how your product is the best in the world, delivering some value that a well-defined set of companies care a lot about. So put another way, it encompasses a lot of things, it defines what are the alternatives to what you do? How are you different? What value can you deliver that no other product on the market can?" Tactical: Define the specific alternatives customers use todayIdentify the unique value only your product can deliverDetermine which specific companies care most about that unique value "I actually think it's better in the early days of a product to keep the positioning a little bit loose and allow the market to pull you maybe in a direction that you didn't think it was going to." Tactical: Treat early positioning as a 'thesis' rather than a fixed factUse broader category terms initially to see which customer segments show the strongest pull "I need to understand that deeply in order to build my whole go-to market strategy, in order to have marketing campaigns that resonate with those kinds of companies, in order to make a list, if my sales are doing outbound, or if I'm doing target account selling, or ABM, how do I make that list of who I'm going after, that kind of stuff." Tactical: Segment the market based on characteristics that make customers care about your specific valueUse these segments to build actionable outbound sales lists "The pitch structure has two big pieces. So the first is the setup. The setup piece is not about us, it's about the market, our point of view on the market. The second bit is all about our differentiated value. So why pick us over the other guys?" Tactical: Start with an insight into the market or the 'problem inside the problem'.Discuss the pluses and minuses of alternative solutions to paint a picture of the entire market.Define a 'perfect world' solution that the customer agrees would solve their problem. "Differentiated value is the answer to the question why pick us over the other alternatives? And so the way we get at that in positioning is we start with putting a stake in the ground of who do we actually compete with?" Tactical: Identify competitive alternatives, including status quo like spreadsheets or manual labor.List features or capabilities that are unique to your product compared to those alternatives.Ask 'so what?' for each feature to uncover the actual value delivered to the customer.
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Arielle Jackson 4 quotes
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"I really believe that positioning dictates so much of your marketing and should always be the first thing you do. I had a student in my last class... He goes, I'll never write a line of code without doing positioning first." Tactical: Perform positioning exercises before writing code or launching productsEnsure all employees and customers describe the company consistently "Positioning is the space that you occupy in your target customer's mind and everything you can do to influence how they describe your product. You have a positioning problem if I ask 10 of your customers or 10 of your employees what the company does or what the product does. And I get multiple answers." Tactical: Interview 10 people (execs, customer-facing staff, and customers) to check for consistencyDistill the company's value proposition into a single sentence "That statement is for target audience who there's a statement of need or opportunity. And then you say our product name is a category that has a benefit, unlike the old thing they were doing, our product works this other way." Tactical: Identify the target audience and their specific statement of needDefine the product category and the primary benefitContrast the product against the 'old way' of doing things "The bar test... you pretend to be someone in your target, having drinks with someone else in your target at a bar and you have to be able to say, hey, I just started using product name. It's this really great category, that benefit. And the other person goes, hm, tell me more or that's cool, what do you mean?" Tactical: Role-play a conversation between two target customers at a barAvoid words like 'leverages' or 'empowers' in favor of descriptive, conversational verbs
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Barbra Gago 2 quotes
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"When you're building a category, you need to make sure that there is a category that's validated by analysts and directory sites and things like that. But also, you want to have a lot of traction in terms of thought leadership like why is this the category? What are the unique value propositions of this particular thing? What are the pain points it solves?" Tactical: Validate the category through analysts and directory sitesDevelop thought leadership explaining why the category existsDefine unique value propositions and specific pain points solved "The main thing which we've talked a little bit about already is really understanding your customers and their pain points and how they talk about things. All of my best marketing and positioning literally comes from having a million conversations with customers and listening to how they solve problems and how our system helps them solve problems and what they're doing and how they talk about stuff." Tactical: Conduct extensive customer conversations to hear their specific languageListen for how customers describe their pain points and solutionsUse customer-derived language to shape marketing and positioning
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Brian Chesky 1 quote
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"The basic idea is this. You can't build a product unless you know how to talk about the product. You can't be an expert in making the product unless you're also an expert in the market of it." Tactical: Combine inbound product development with outbound product marketingEnsure product experts are also market experts
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Camille Ricketts 1 quote
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"I think the best first step for any positioning exercise is to think who are our best fit customers? And it's not necessarily who we wish they would be, but it's actually the hard cold reality of who they actually are. Where it's like these are the people that seem to be really getting it. They're paying us more, they're talking about it just organically." Tactical: Identify customers who are already paying more and talking about the product organicallyBase positioning on the attributes of these high-value, organic advocates
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Christine Itwaru 1 quote
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"Product marketing positions help the revenue team sell their lead gen for all of the outbound and the campaigns that they're running... For us, it's about educating and it's about helping our internal folks, our internal revenue team understand, 'What is the added value? How do you now do this thing?'" Tactical: Distinguish between 'selling' (PMM) and 'educating' (Product Ops) when preparing internal teams for new features
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Christopher Lochhead 3 quotes
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"Languaging, which is the strategic use of language to change thinking. And a mistake that a lot of entrepreneurs make is they use old language to describe their new thing." Tactical: Create new terminology to describe your category (e.g., 'Vertical Railway' for elevators).Avoid using old language to describe innovative products. "The company that creates the languaging for the category wins. ... New languaging creates new thinking, and a demarcation point in language creates a demarcation point in thinking, which can create a demarcation point in perceived value." Tactical: Introduce new terms like 'LLM' or 'Training Data' to define the conversation in your space. "Positioning in the modern context is for losers. That is to say people who are fighting over the 24%. ... Positioning has become sort of category design for the cowards. It's like, 'Well, I know that we could really be as radical as to create our own space, so let's just see if we can carve off our little niche over here.'" Tactical: Avoid positioning against competitors; instead, position your category against the status quo.
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Claire Butler 3 quotes
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"I see that they were actually had some branding and positioning and things that the products, Figma, was going to be named Summit, that was the name... I had an immediate reaction of like, "We cannot make this thing Summit. That's not going to work. We can't have two brands. Summit's not ownable, we can't build equity and multiple things. That's just never going to work."" Tactical: Avoid generic names that cannot be easily owned in the marketConsolidate brand equity into a single, ownable name early on "I remember there was more than one day where we locked ourselves in a conference room and I made Dylan and show at the time have this positioning up on the big screen and made them agree on it word for word." Tactical: Conduct intensive, word-for-word positioning reviews with founders "I think one of the things I learned right away, very quickly was that designers don't want to hear from marketers. They don't want to be marketed to and they have an extremely high bullshit meter. You use a word like efficiency, collaboration, all of those buzzwords, and they're just like, "I don't want to hear this."" Tactical: Avoid fluff words like 'efficiency' or 'collaboration' when targeting practitionersFocus messaging on technical features and how they improve the user's workflow
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Crystal W 1 quote "If your product does something that's not super familiar, you have to tie it to something that is. So I talked about using drivers to sell GoPay. Before that, one thing that we did was to actually take someone's virtual account number and put it onto a picture of a credit card. You know what a credit card is, that's familiar to you." Tactical: Use visual cues (like a credit card image) to explain digital-only conceptsFocus copy on the user's pain point rather than the technical solution
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David Placek 3 quotes
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"Your brand name, nothing's going to be used more often or for longer than that name. Design will change, messaging will change, products will change, but that name is there." Tactical: Prioritize the name as a long-term asset that outlasts design and product iterations "Even before you launch this brand, why not start with an advantage in the marketplace? And you won't get an advantage if you're descriptive. If you are Cloud Pro and there's 10 other cloud services, you're not going to stand out in the marketplace." Tactical: Avoid descriptive names that blend into the categoryAim for distinctiveness to create 'cumulative advantage' over time "You don't want to make a statement here. You want to start a story. And Azure is going to behave differently in the marketplace than Cloud Pro, which is I think one of the names that we presented to them on the other site at their request." Tactical: Choose names that evoke a story or experience rather than just stating what the product does
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Elena Verna 2 quotes
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"Individual is not solving for data-driven culture. Individual is just solving for data insights for them. Company's solving for data-driven culture... Sales can tell that story. Sales can bridge that gap, and then you can increase the perceived value in order to bridge the gap to that $15,000, 20, hundred-thousand dollar contract." Tactical: Identify the enterprise-level value prop (e.g., 'increased innovation' vs. 'making a whiteboard')Bridge the gap between what the product shows and what the organization benefits from "Never ever once have I seen a rebrand or redesign, especially of UK marketing site produce good performance results. New CMO comes in designing their website or designing the brand as if it was reflection of their personal taste, and oftentimes it's promised with our acquisition is going to go up and it never materializes into anything meaningful." Tactical: Forecast and model for a performance hit immediately following a rebrand launch.Bake in three to six months of optimization work after a redesign to return to previous performance levels.Avoid promising increased acquisition as a direct result of a visual rebrand.
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Emilie Gerber 4 quotes
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"You can get so in the weeds with your own messaging that you want to set up this massive problem statement, you want to make it a huge trend story, but if you're very straightforward and you're pattern matching, it's generally actually going to work." Tactical: Be direct and concise in messagingUse pattern matching to help reporters understand the story quickly "I'll put company taking on whatever Salesforce with X approach. It's so successful because instantly it gives the reporter a frame of reference. And so it gives the reporter, oh, I know what Salesforce does, so I can understand how this solution would be better." Tactical: Use 'Company X taking on [Incumbent] with [Approach]' in subject linesFrame the product as a better version of a household name "A lot of companies want to position themselves as category creators, and I actually hate that. It doesn't work. It doesn't land with press, and most of the time it's not totally true... for PR, it's just not a useful tactic." Tactical: Avoid 'category creator' jargon in press pitchesFocus on how you are better than existing solutions rather than being the 'first' of a new category "The more that you can reiterate over and over again how you want the article to be, I think the more likely that it'll land in the reporter's head and make sure that the reporter really understands what you're building and what your goals are." Tactical: Nail core messages before talking to reportersReiterate the desired angle multiple times during the interview
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Eli Schwartz 2 quotes
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"Product people need to think about how do we position this to the user that is not going to find out about this from a social channel, that's not going to be attracted by an ad? This is a user that's doing their own self-discovery journey." Tactical: Identify the specific self-discovery journey a user takes when they aren't coming from social or adsPosition the product as a solution to the specific problem the user is searching for in the mid-funnel "We discovered that Tinder is a loneliness-solving problem, loneliness-solving solution... we built out is if you look for online dating in many cities around the world... you're going to find a Tinder page, which gives some examples of places you can go on a date. And more than that, it gives you Tinder as a solution to solve the loneliness problem you have." Tactical: Use user research to find the 'problem-solving' angle of your productCreate local or programmatic pages that showcase the product as a solution to that specific problem
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Emily Kramer 2 quotes
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"Forget the product marketing content partner, demand and growth, forget all of it, and just think of marketing as you need a fuel and you need an engine. And goal is like all the things that you're creating. I mean this should be obvious, but it's the content, it's the word, it's the design in some regard. All the things that you're making, all the things that are going to add value. An engine is how you get it out to the right people." Tactical: Identify whether your current bottleneck is 'fuel' (nothing valuable to say) or 'engine' (no way to distribute the message).Ensure you have fuel (positioning/content) before building a complex distribution engine. "The company that you're working on, what's the product? Why is it better? Who is it for? It's the most basic positioning question you can ask, but a lot of people can't answer it. So that's a good one. And also if you're writing positioning at your company or if you're on marketing your company and you can't tell me what the product is, why it's better, who it's for, go figure that out if that's what the home page of your website should cover." Tactical: Audit your homepage to ensure it clearly answers the three core positioning questions.Use these three questions as a litmus test when interviewing marketing candidates.
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Geoffrey Moore 2 quotes
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"You want to have a target segment that is big enough to matter, small enough to lead and a good fit with your crown jewels." Tactical: Define segments by geography, industry, and profession to ensure peers talk to each other.Aim for 30-50% market share in your initial 'pond' within two years. "We are the technology leaders who have specialized and committed to solve this problem. And by the way, we have huge respect for your incumbent vendor. We're not asking you to kick them out. They just can't solve this problem. We also have respect for our peers, but frankly, they wouldn't know your problem if they wouldn't recognize it in a lineup." Tactical: Acknowledge incumbent vendors rather than trying to replace them entirely.Differentiate from technology peers by highlighting your specific commitment to the customer's niche problem.
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Gia Laudi 2 quotes
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"Generally, the lowest hanging fruit outcome is realigning around better positioning and messaging. And identifying more resonant positioning and messaging that speaks to that context that I was talking about before, before people discover that you even exist, have that moment where they're like, 'Oh my god, this has to change. This sucks,' ties that in, ties in what they care about and what is valuable about your product and then also that desired outcome." Tactical: Identify the 'struggle' context customers experience before discovering your productAlign messaging with the customer's desired outcome rather than just product features "You want to reflect them back to them. That is what is going to show them that you understand the problem that they have and that your product has exactly what it is that they need. The hierarchy of messaging is really important as well... you want to reflect back what they said they care about, not what you think is the coolest thing about your product." Tactical: Use 'voice of customer' research to mirror the language customers useEstablish a messaging hierarchy based on what customers rank as most valuableCreate a messaging guide (5-7 pages) to serve as guardrails for all collateral
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Gina Gotthilf 5 quotes
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"Communication is constantly underrated. And communication isn't about being able to convey a message, it's about being able to convey a message in a way that the listener receives it, and understands it, and remembers it. And that's really hard to do." Tactical: Focus on making the message resonant and memorable for the specific listener. "There is always a quirk, like it's unexpected. The way we talk to you is a little bit funny. It doesn't take ourselves too, seriously and it makes the person receiving this message feel something. Again, it's about how you make people feel. And you feel like either you giggle, or you're like, wait what? They just did what? And using that to your benefit." Tactical: Incorporate 'quirks' or unexpected elements into brand communication to provoke an emotional response.Don't take the brand too seriously to make it more relatable. "First, the core copy, the message and button need to be above the fold. Or, if you're not going to keep the button above the fold, which I still recommend, but if you're not going to do that for whatever reason, then you need to have a very clear indicator that there's something to scroll towards on your page. The second thing, applies to both desktop and mobile, is people skim... So you have to approach a landing page with that perspective in as much as possible. And so for me, what makes something particularly skimmable is first restricting copy a lot. And even copy that seems short is probably not short enough. Second, so people normally like to have a title, some sort of subtitle, and then an image and a button... Having the title and the button speak to each other is really cool. Because if people only read the title and the button, they got it." Tactical: Keep core copy and buttons above the fold.Restrict copy length aggressively to accommodate skimmers.Ensure the title and the button text 'speak to each other' so the value prop is clear even if nothing else is read.Use clear visual indicators if content requires scrolling. "I love copywriting, and I believe that communication is constantly underrated, and communication isn't about being able to convey a message. It's about being able to convey a message in a way that the listener receives it and understands it and remembers it. And that's really hard to do. And one of the things I've helped employ at Duolingo that I think is still there today... is a unique voice and what that means is exactly what you said, Lenny, not just another language learning app where we give you instructions and you follow directions. There is always a quirk. It's unexpected." Tactical: Develop a 'unique voice' that avoids industry clichés.Audit copy to ensure it couldn't have been written by any other company. "We constantly looked at every copy we wrote and asked, 'Could this have been written by other companies? Could this have been any other company or is it Duolingo? What makes this Duolingo?'... It helps figuring out, exactly what does that voice, what does it sound like? What are some words that it tends to use? Why yes, why not? What's too much, what's too little?" Tactical: Create a voice guide defining specific words, tones, and boundaries ('what's too much, what's too little').Test every piece of copy against the brand's unique identity.
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Grant Lee 1 quote
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"When I think about something that could be scalable, it's almost like you can take the ingredients of a brand and replicate it a ton, this DNA is something where you can imagine creating tons of content around and all feeling pretty cohesive. And I think that needs to be done by design. You're really being thoughtful about every single element. Like what is the art direction you want to go with? What is the voice and tone? Such that as you're creating thousands of pieces of copy, it all feels pretty cohesive." Tactical: Invest in a rebrand when the existing brand limits your ability to scale creative content.Ensure 'symmetric messaging' where the ad, landing page, and product experience all feel cohesive.
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Hamilton Helmer 1 quote
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"Almost every startup that you want to deal with starts with counter positioning because remember what product market fit is primarily is a substitution. You are coming up with a way to satisfy a more or less existing need in a novel way that creates more value." Tactical: Identify how your product satisfies an existing need in a way that creates a 'collateral damage' dilemma for incumbents who might try to copy you.
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Ivan Zhao 1 quote
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"Only hardcore Lego fans care about Lego bricks. Most people care about Lego boxes. And they actually want the Lego box to be ready-made. When you unpack the box, the set is there for you, right? That's what we're learning a lot, especially move up market. There's this term that took me a while to learn. It's called solutions. You need to be a solution for enterprise customer." Tactical: Package modular features into 'solutions' that sit on a specific P&L for enterprise buyers.Create pre-made templates or 'sets' to reduce the cognitive load for non-power users.
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Jackson Shuttleworth 1 quote
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"We've actually set up really good infrastructure for copy testing. We used to say continue, our standard CTA is continue, and we changed that to commit to my goal, and it was a massive win." Tactical: Test high-intent CTAs (e.g., 'Commit to my goal') against generic ones (e.g., 'Continue').Invest in infrastructure that allows for rapid, low-cost copy experimentation.
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Jake Knapp + John Zeratsky 2 quotes
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"It's crucial then that a product has a clear promise that it makes, and that promise is radically differentiated from the alternatives and that that promise is strong enough that you'll try it and then that the product delivers on that promise." Tactical: Focus on the promise made to the customer rather than just technical features.Ensure the promise is strong enough to overcome the customer's natural defense against trying new things. "We talk about classic differentiators, fast to slow, smart to not so smart to borrow from the iPhone slide, easy to use to hard to use, and so on." Tactical: Score the product against competitors on classic scales: fast/slow, smart/not-smart, easy/hard, free/expensive, focused/one-size-fits-all, simple/complicated, integrated/siloed.
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Jason Feifer 2 quotes
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"The editor, the writer, I'll just say it as plainly as possible. They don't care about you. They don't care about you. They care about their reader or their listener or their viewer. That's who they care about. That's who they're serving, and if you can be of use to them in sharing the kinds of information that they are looking to serve their audience, then you can get what you want." Tactical: Research a publication's mission before pitching to ensure your story fits their specific editorial lens.Avoid treating journalists as service providers; instead, position yourself as a resource for their readers. "If he is selling hot dogs in Washington, DC, then I understand what press is for him. Press is to drive hotdog sales. That's what he wants to do. Entrepreneur is not going to do that for him. Full stop. Why? Because Entrepreneur reaches a national to international audience... What he needs to do is think, 'Okay, my goal, get more people to buy hot dogs. Where am I? I'll in Washington, DC. How can I reach people who are interested in food in my market?'" Tactical: Match the scale of the publication (local vs. national) to the scale of your target customer base.Look at where your competitors have been featured to identify the right audiences to target.
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Jen Abel 2 quotes
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"You need to vision cast, you need to sell to a gap, don't sell to a problem. There's a very big difference between problem selling and gap selling. Problem selling is highly specific, more technical than not, and it's the way that every salesperson is going to go about it, find the problem and anchor to it. When you're selling to a leader, you need to be vision casting and you need to be selling an opportunity which is they are here, here's where we can take you." Tactical: Sell the 'opportunity' and the 'future version' of the customer (Mario on blast) rather than just the tool (the mushroom).Avoid scripts that focus solely on pain points, as they can feel overly 'salesy' to executives. "As soon as you become a comparison, as soon as you become one of three that they're testing out, you've already sort of lost. It's all about differentiation. Here's what you will be able to do tomorrow because of how we're going to serve you today." Tactical: Own the framing of the problem so that you are not easily compared to incumbents.Focus messaging on what the client can achieve 'tomorrow' rather than just current features.
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Jessica Hische 4 quotes
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"I think the logo and the brand assets can generate a lot of both internal and external excitement and just tell people what to expect from the thing that they're about to engage with. Some people say don't judge a book by its cover. I'm the opposite, where any book... The cover of the book should be giving you incredible insight into what is on the interior of the book and setting the tone and setting the vibe so that when you open the book and read the book, it's a symbiotic thing where you're like, 'Oh, I understand what I was getting into.'" Tactical: Ensure the brand assets generate internal team excitement as well as external customer interest.Use the 'cover' of the product to provide immediate insight into the 'interior' value. "If you invest super heavily on the whole brand vision from the jump, sometimes it's like throwing away money if you have to pivot. What I love about the work that I do is that I understand that a lot of people have to just have something to put on decks and have something to put on a holding page or whatever, and internal teams are totally capable of doing that early work. But then if it does become successful, you don't want to get locked into whatever it is that you had to throw together before an investor meeting or something." Tactical: Use internal teams for early 'placeholder' branding during the pivot-heavy phase.Wait until the company is successful or stable before committing to a massive brand exploration. "One of the reasons why I tell people why having a custom logo or custom typography can really matter is that if you're using something that's available to everyone, the chances of someone else coming in and copying you are very easy and high. You might be one of these lucky companies that just out the gate is outrageously successful, but with success comes people climbing up behind you trying to copy your success. If that success is very easily copyable and people will try to trick your customers into coming their way by repeating the things that you're doing, including the branding, one way to avoid that is by doing something that's more customized when it comes to the logo and brand." Tactical: Invest in custom design to prevent competitors from easily tricking customers with similar 'off-the-shelf' branding.Consider a refresh when you are about to physically invest money in swag, conferences, or large-scale rollouts. "When you think about logos and things like that, you want it to be something that, at a super fast glance, people can read it right away. That doesn't mean that everything has to be simple, but it just means that everything has to be incredibly legible, especially when you're starting a new company or you have a less recognizable brand." Tactical: Test logos for 'misreads' or unintended w
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