This article is my attempt to understand the concept of Product Positioning and try to define a mechanism to implement it for a new product idea.

Background

Recently I have been thinking about many website ideas, rather these ideas are coming to my mind. Provided the advancement in website development technology it is very easy to setup a website. Also, I presumably thought that these concepts might be new to Indian audience. Being a software developer, it is very tempting for me to jump directly to start the development of the website, start looking for a good available domain name and get ready something quickly. Given the available tools it is very easy to get something ready in no time and after that wait for customer to visit the site. The enthusiasm to create something last only for few days and then due to lack of traffic to the website the concept go no further. After trying few failed attempt, I thought to stop, take a step back and see where is the problem exactly.

The Problem

In my search for what going wrong, I came across multiple ‘Startup’ theories developed and cultivated by Steve Blank, Eric Rise and Ash Mourya.  Thanks to their good work, I understood many areas and method I need to improve upon. I will right different post about their lean startup methodologies. During my search, I came across this concept called ‘Positioning’ and suddenly lot of things started making sense.

When a idea come to anyone’s mind that means he stumble upon something that he think can be done better and he sees a opportunity that may lead to a business. First think that needs to be understood hear is every problem in the world can not be always solved by a software program. So it is must to follow the concepts provided by lean startup methodology such as validating you have a problem worth solving and customer discovery; but, I think, even before that you should start doing the market analysis. This market analysis will include some of the following concepts.

If there is a problem or need for something then it must be filled in by some alternative. These alternatives could be manual processes, existing competitor’s products, other products not specifically developed to solve this problem but serves the purpose etc. Also, it is highly unlikely that you will be solving that problem for the first time. There must be people who should have tried it before.

So for each need any customer holds a specific answer in his mind. This answer is typically developed by his experience in everyday life. That experience may include and repeated advertisement of product on television or a traditional manual way he learned as he grown.

This is nothing but product positioning. Product positioning is specific to each customer and a class of customer (typically with similar life style) could hold similar product positioning.

Product Positioning

It turns out to be worthwhile to find out and define the position of the product in customer’s life/mind. For that following ingredients are needed. Most of the requirements are already taken care in a typical lean canvas-

  • Who is the exact target customer? Define his demographic. (Example a reach businessman in town)
  • What is the exact problem that needs to be solved? (The businessman needs a car)
  • What is the position of the product in his mind? (His car will be his prestige symbol)
  • What are the existing options available? (BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Maruti etc.)
  • Can the existing options fill the position? (Mercedes)
  • What are the gaps? (His competitor already bought a Mercedes last week)

The aim is to identify this position gap. There is no advantage to be just a new competitor for an existing alternative who is already filling that gap.

Only if you could find the position gap then only you have a problem which worth solving. We are not thinking about the solution here, we are still just thinking about the problem.

Finding this position gap is only possible by rigorously studding the behavior of the customer and the existing alternatives in the market.

The best place to start is by studding the existing alternative even before going  to customer for problem interview. This will give you functional understanding of the domain. It is very convenient to ignore/avoid the looking at the alternatives as we are possessive about our solution/idea. Business idea is not a invention or discovery it is just a solution to fill a need of the customer and it should be treated that way only and not as a invention.

Feel free to share you thoughts by comments.