April Dunford, market positioning expert and author of the just released book Obviously Awesome, shares why for most lead gen, customer acquisition or sales problem, it’s really a market positioning problem. They don’t really know the value their product is giving to the right target audience. Once you nail that, demand gen, acquisition and sales have a more coherent plan. April goes through her methodology in helping companies from startups to 40 billion dollar company just do that.
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What You’ll Learn in This Episode
- Why most companies get market positioning wrong (and why you should care)
- April’s steps to defining your marketing positioning (proven over 10 years of experience working with startups and billion dollar companies)
- Why branding is “bullshit” for B2B enterprise companies
- Most companies get “freemium” so wrong
Tweet Some Quotes from This Episode
For a lot of companies, the weakness in their positioning is because they started with their product's value. You can't really start there because it matters what your competitive comparables are. – @aprildunford Click To Tweet Not all your customers are great customers. Some of them are lousy customers. Some of them bought your product and didn't really get what you did. – @aprildunford Click To Tweet Your segmentation is fundamentally figuring out who are the people that care a lot about your product's value. – @aprildunford Click To Tweet To figure out your company's true competitors, ask your customers, 'if we didn't exist, what would you do tomorrow?' – @aprildunford Click To Tweet For B2B, spreadsheets and interns are almost always your competitors. It's usually not the other startups your competing for venture capital dollars. – @aprildunford Click To TweetAbout April Dunford
April Dunford is a positioning consultant, entrepreneur, board member, angel investor and advisor. Her expertise is built on 25 years as an executive in a series of 7 successful technology startups and 3 global tech giants. She has launched 16 products as an executive. As a consultant she has assisted in dozens more.
April is an international keynote speaker on the topics of Positioning, Market Strategy and New Product Introduction. Her goal is to help marketers, entrepreneurs and sales teams do a better job of positioning innovative new products so that customers find them obviously awesome. As a consultant, she works mainly with B2B tech companies both large and small on making their products easier to understand and love. Her positioning training and workshops are built on a methodology I’ve developed over 20 years of launching and positioning products.
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Show Notes
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3:32
April’s career journey
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10:10
Tech field can be agist
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12:10
Why the marketing they teach you in school might not work for B2B
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18:00
April’s steps for helping startups and enterprise companies figure out their market positioning
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20:00
Your segmentation is fundamentally figuring out who are the people that care a lot about your product’s value.
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21:30
If you don’t have a lot of traction, you shouldn’t spend so much time on positioning
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23:05
To figure out your competitors, ask your customers, “If we didn’t exist, we all got hit by a bus tomorrow, what would you do?”
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23:55
For step one, you gotta figure out, “For the people who love you, what are you competitive comparables?” For step two, figure out how you’re differentiated from those competitors
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25:30
The next step is, “For each of those features, what is the value translates to your customers?”
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26:40
Once you have that, ask yourself, “If our big value this, who should we sell to and why?”
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27:50
What are the companies that intensely feels the pain, therefore your product’s core value is super valuable?
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29:40
The last step is to figure out what market you’re in?
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31:58
Why figuring out your positioning can help you figure out your lead gen, demand gen and paid acquisition
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33:00
A lot of folks that come to me, they thing they have lead gen problem or a sales problem. What their problem is that they don’t really know the value you’re delivering. And you don’t really know the best people to deliver that value to.
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33:30
Other books April suggests about positioning – Positioning (Battle for Your Mind) and Crossing The Chasm
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38:09
What April thinks about branding for B2B companies
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41:30
Branding is the sum total of all the experiences that a customers has with you as a company.
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43:26
What April thinks about freemium model
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48:35
April’s advice for marketers early in their career
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52:30
Where you can find April online
Links
- April Dunford’s Website – get details about her book her
- April on Twitter
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