The Whats and Whys of a Positioning Document

A positioning framework is a tool for context setting. The document that communicates the positioning is used to gain internal agreement, clarity, accuracy, and uniformity around the specific value being offered to specific target audience segments. A solid positioning statement becomes the messaging cornerstone of the integrated marketing campaign, Sales go-to-market plan, communications with PR agencies and analysts, and more.

Positioning documentation

The positioning document acts as a single source of truth, functioning similarly to an R&D architecture document. It answers core questions in order to enable and support teams and especially content creators, strategists, and executive leaders to accurately and uniformly communicate the key messages about the product, in which the success of the product, the brand, and the business are rooted.

These questions include:

• What is your product name?
• Who are your target customers?
• What is your target customer’s compelling reason to buy your product?
• What is the market alternative you are seeking to displace?
• What is the product alternative?
• How are you as a company credible and reliable?
• Competitive alternatives
• Differentiated "Features" or "Capabilities"
• Value for customers
• Target customer segmentation
• Market category

Positioning document contributors and use cases

• Product Marketers: own the lifecycle and regular maintenance of the document and ensure that the document aligns the product's capabilities with market opportunities.
• Product Managers: Product managers possess a deep understanding of the product's features, capabilities, and development roadmap, and as such are each responsible for contributing to and ultimately approving all content related to the features and products for which they are responsible, ensuring that the positioning document accurately reflects the product's strengths and unique selling propositions.
• CMO and brand owners: assist in explaining and approving the sections about the company's vision, mission, brand, brand identity.
• Executive Leadership: senior leaders approve the document, acknowledging its central use in aligning it with the company's strategic vision and objectives. Their approval and input are crucial as they ensure that the document reflects the broader company goals and strategy.

Positioning stakeholders and use cases

Stakeholders most likely to effectively use and leverage the positioning document include:

Executive leadership

The positioning enables senior leadership across different orgs, locations, and product groups to communicate uniform messaging both internally and externally. This is fundamental for the success of the business. Furthermore, and particularly as the company grows, so does executive leadership. This means as new leaders are added who are less familiar with the core beliefs and agreements between the original founders, they will be able to understand the core positioning of the product and be aligned on all messaging.

Executive leadership is the stakeholder that must agree to approve and rely on the positioning document, even when this is an agreement to compromise. The document then supports onboarding of additional executives whenever necessary. Furthermore, the fundamental differences between opinions amongst leadership can generate further discussions, leading to necessary updates in the agreed-upon positioning, requiring all other stakeholders to be kept informed. By ensuring the positioning document is continuously aligned with changes in leadership decision, a smooth transition is easier for all other stakeholders who use the positioning document.

Example: the onboarding of a new Partner Enablement VP.

Product management

Senior Product Management communicates their product strategy via such a document. This in turn can also help them make further roadmap decisions and to communicate that strategy across the organization via the document itself, rather than the otherwise needed hours of meetings and frontal communications.

Junior Product Management leverages such a document to help them understand and align with roadmap decisions and to communicate that strategy across the organization via the document itself. Furthermore, once “live” and then regularly updated prior to upcoming releases, the documentation can better support ongoing efforts in ensuring internal alignment in messaging between product management and product marketers. For example, it can help ensure alignment for sensitive releases, such as MDM or multi-regions. This ensures that when approved, the precise messaging is correctly communicated to all other stakeholders, expectations are accurately aligned, and all in a timely fashion.

Marketing leaders and strategists

These leaders leverage the positioning document to influence and design their strategies year-by-year and quarter-by-quarter. Assuming the document is regularly updated, they refer to the positioning document independently in order to plan and ensure proper execution of their strategies and plans.

Analyst relations

These leaders leverage the positioning document to communicate with analysts, and also to report back when they feel changes may be necessary based on those communications.

Example: Analyst Relations leader regularly consults with positioning documentation prior to analyst meetings to ensure they're completely aligned with company goals when representing the business.

Sales leaders

These leaders leverage the positioning document to stay informed and align the direction they provide their teams with accordingly. They are consultants in the designing of the messaging in the document, and in ongoing updates of the document, based on their and their teams’ experiences in the field, and as leaders, they may want to use it as a reference from time to time as well.

Content creators, digital marketers, training departments, etc.

These people include anyone who creates content for the company, whether for internal stakeholders (learning, market information, etc.) or for external personas, including customers and MSPs. Content creators leverage the positioning document to design and inform their content on a day-by-day basis! Assuming the document is regularly updated, they refer to the positioning document independently, regularly, in order to plan and ensure proper execution of content that accurately and uniformly communicates the product and the brand of the business.

By using the positioning document, significant amounts of time and resources are saved thanks to the creation of drafted content and the execution of marketing campaigns that, from the get-go, are better aligned with the company vision.

Example: The shared version of such a document should generate new ideas for digital marketing, including inspection of alternative forums via which to communicate beyond LinkedIn (MSP forums, Reddit, etc.) and updates in language.

New leaders and content creators

These people leverage the positioning document to assist them in self-onboarding when joining the company, helping them ramp up significantly faster and in a uniform way. By using the positioning document, significant amounts of time and resources are saved in the onboarding process of new employees in any of the relevant disciplines.

Product marketers

These people not only assist in the writing and maintenance of the positioning document, but also leverage the positioning document to identify needs of our internal stakeholders and market personas, and to generate their internal roadmap to respond to these needs accordingly by better understanding:

• The varying personas targeted by the business
• The varying verticals targeted by the business
• The benefit and the value of the product as a whole, and also of all of its parts
• The direction of the business overall

All stakeholders

The consistent use of the positioning document as a single source of truth generates ongoing healthy discussions around the company strategy, ensuring that the strategy remains top of mind and also relevant in accordance with changes in the market as well as growth of the product. The easiest example of this is the onboarding of new team members with the help of the positioning document, which - especially with experienced professionals - can also generate important discussions and sometimes refinement of just the language, but also even of the strategy itself.

Summary

A solid framework and supporting positioning documentation supports:

• increased alignment across the entire company
• saved time and resources
• fundamental integration with corporate strategy
• alignment with industry trends and customer insights
• accelerated time to market
• accelerated time to brand awareness
• employee and customer retainment alike