Product Positioning and Buyer Personas
Identify the traits that make your business an obvious “Yes!” to your best prospects. Build detailed buyer personas and a plan to go after them.
Your positioning lays the foundation for all of your future marketing efforts. The right positioning can make the difference between being an obvious “Yes!” to your prospects, or getting drowned out in a sea of competitive noise.
Together, we’ll zero in on your products’ unique strengths, their value to potential buyers, and the kinds of buyers who care the most. We’ll use this information to develop your “Yes!” Positioning. Next, we’ll do a deep dive into those buyers who care a lot about what you offer and create detailed personas for each one. We’ll wrap up with an action plan and concrete steps you can start taking right away to go after them.
Key deliverables:
A Positioning Framework that clearly outlines your market positioning, the unique value your business delivers, and key characteristics of customers who will find that value obvious.
Detailed Buyer Personas that describe your company’s most important customers – their challenges, values, trusted information sources, common objections and messages that are likely to resonate.
Recommended Action Plan for where and how to invest in marketing initiatives that will reach your intended buyers, as well as how to message to them.
The Process
Here’s what the entire process looks like, from start to finish. It usually takes a few weeks to complete, depending on your team’s and clients’ availability.
Positioning Workshop. Together with your executive team, we’ll walk through a series of questions that are designed to help us zero in on your positioning. This discussion usually runs from 90 minutes to 2 hours.
Client Interviews. I’ll schedule phone interviews with up to 5 clients of your choosing to hear their perspective on your unique value. After each conversation, I’ll share detailed notes and a summary of findings.
First Positioning Draft. Using the information from steps 1 and 2, I’ll develop a first draft of your new Positioning Framework, which we'll then review together. There's usually a little back and forth refining here.
Buyer Personas Workshops. We’ll have one 60-90-minute workshop per buyer persona, up to 3 (most startups have 2-3). We'll create these onscreen together, and by the end, you'll have a Google slide deck of detailed personas that you can use for future marketing, messaging and sales efforts.
Action Plan and Next Steps. By the end of our positioning and personas work, we should have a much clearer idea of where to invest your marketing efforts, whom to target, and how to message to them. We’ll discuss ideas and next steps, and I'll put together an immediately actionable plan that you and your team can start executing right away.
FAQs
Why do I have to go to all this work? Can’t I just run some ads on Facebook?
You could, but it would be like building a house without laying a foundation first. I’ve seen companies - and not just startups, either - waste tens of thousands of dollars and countless hours on marketing activities that hurt more than help, all because they didn’t invest a few hours upfront to understand their buyers, their market and their product’s unique value within that market. I want to save you from that fate.
I’m still not convinced. Why can’t I just test some stuff now and see what works?
I love testing, but there’s a big difference between running strategic, informed tests that give you actionable data… and throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks. If you take the time to understand your buyers, market and value proposition first, you’ll immediately be able to make better decisions about where and how to run those tests. It’s the difference between saying, “Our buyers are probably on Facebook, so we should run some Facebook ads!” and “Our buyers have told us they really value educational content and listen to a lot of podcasts. Let’s create a helpful guide and promote it on the top three podcasts in our industry.”
What if my Positioning or Buyer Personas change at a later date?
Great question! They almost certainly will, which is why your Positioning Framework and Buyer Personas are designed to be living documents. You can and should revisit them regularly (at least once a year, or whenever a big product or marketing initiative comes up) to make sure they’re still relevant and update them as needed.