The difference between positioning, messaging, and copywriting (and how to do them well)
Product positioning and messaging is both a science and an art. Analyzing your competitors and opportunities for where your product fits into the market is more a science, whereas figuring out how to communicate that positioning is an art. I’m going to break down the difference between positioning, messaging, and copywriting and also show you how to create winning positioning and messaging that propels growth.
Product positioning and messaging is everything
Positioning and messaging is our bread and butter at Olivine. We see a lot of people mixing up positioning, messaging, and copywriting—no hate, it’s hard to nail. The main consequence though is that you won’t be able to find the story only you can tell in the market and everything downstream will be a lot harder. The more you invest in getting your positioning and messaging right, the easier it’ll be to stand out, drive growth, and close revenue.
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The difference between positioning, messaging, and copywriting
Here it is clear and simple:
Positioning is where your product fits in the market, who you serve, what you’re doing, and how you’re different.
Messaging is the clarity of what you say about your product.
Copywriting is the cleverness of how you communicate it all
Now let’s move on :-)
The biggest (and most common) thing people get wrong
People often look at the current positioning and messaging of successful companies for inspiration, but they neglect to look at those brands when they were just getting started (and no one knew who they were or what they did yet).
Let’s look at Uber as an example.
Here’s their first website:
It’s pretty ugly, but highly effective and specifically positioned. When Uber launched, the idea of getting into a stranger’s car to get somewhere was completely new. They had little brand awareness at the time, which is why their very clear and specific positioning and messaging is so important. Moreover, since people were already familiar with the idea of a private driver, Uber anchored itself well in the customer’s mind by identifying as ‘everyone’s private driver.’
Here is one of their more recent websites (after they achieved mass adoption):
If we didn’t already know what Uber was, we’d look at this and think, “moving them where, how?” This messaging would’ve been too ambiguous and we’d be confused.
Aspirational live-happily-ever after messaging sounds nice, but almost always fails to connect with buyers. Don’t look at current brands’ positioning and messaging for inspiration - look at when they got started, especially if you’re early-stage. Your positioning and messaging should solve an immediate need and problem for customers. Unless you’re *super* recognizable, splashy aspirational positioning and messaging doesn’t work. You need to understand where you are on the scale of brand recognition so you can calibrate your positioning and messaging to it.
How to create product positioning
Positioning = where you fit in the market.
Your product story starts to reveal itself in your positioning while your messaging and copywriting bring it to life. Positioning has the power to change how people view your product entirely. A great example of this is Listerine.
Listerine started as a surgical antiseptic and with very few product changes, sold as a floor cleaner and now a mouthwash. Not a lot changed about the product, but the positioning of it did, like its packaging, user instructions, and where it was placed in the store. Where you sell surgical antiseptic, who you sell it to, and for how much is fundamentally different from mouthwash. And while floor cleaners and mouthwash are both purchased at the grocery store, they are in different aisles.
A similar product with different positioning changes the whole go-to-market function.
5 Steps to create product positioning:
Let go of preconceived notions
Isolate your uniqueness (what is the story only you can tell?)
Value: what can your uniqueness do for customers? (Jobs to Be Done)
Who cares? (your personas)
What category do you compete in? (market categories provide a frame of reference)
There are many lenses of product positioning, but here are a few as an example:
Price: 365 by Whole Foods is the generic, cheaper version of products
Quality: Tesla started high-end and is working their way down market
Specific use case: The iPhone is positioned as a smartphone, but it does a whole lot more. Calling people is the least useful thing people do on the phone, but we still call it an iPhone. When it was launched, mid 2000, Apple knew it would be more than a phone, but they had to create the “mental bridge” for people to discover what it was.
Competitors: Bookshop is an online bookstore which connects all the independent bookstores through one inventory database. When you buy a book online, you're buying it from a bookshop. But they positioned themselves as the “rebel Alliance to Amazon's empire”.
Our positioning template - simple, yet effective (try it!)
How to create product messaging
Messaging = clarity on what you say.
Copywriting = cleverness of how you say it.
Be very mindful of this distinction. Cleverness without clarity will almost always end in disaster.
There are six key elements of product messaging:
Product description: what your product is in 5 words or less
Headline: a compelling headline and image that resonates with the buyer and makes them want to learn more about your product. Generally a combination of why you exist and what you do.
Subhead: Hint at the problem and how your product solves it.
Benefit/Outcome: What your target buyer will achieve by using a combination of features. Use the description to explain how that happens.
Customer testimonial: In a perfect world, what would your ideal customer say about your product?
Features: This is where you check off their shopping list with feature names and descriptions.
At Olivine we’ve worked with clients to capture these elements to drive better messaging through our Build-A-Box workshops and product press release workshops, popularized by Amazon.
Once we hone in on the right product messaging, we like to create what we call “messaging in the wild.” It involves taking the messaging and showing how it’d look in real life. Using the company’s branding, we create things like display ads, Twitter posts, the homepage hero, a sales deck slide, an ideal Product Hunt comment, a LinkedIn tagline, and more - and compile it all visually to showcase how everything would look, well, in the wild. It’s a great way to circulate messaging to the broader team or company to give everyone an idea visually of how new messaging will look in practice.
10 rules for product positioning and messaging
Based on everything we’ve shared so far, here are ten rules to guide your positioning and messaging efforts:
Calibrate to the current brand recognition.
Be specific: if people can’t picture themselves using your product, they won’t.
Speak to your buyer personas: how will your target audience know they are in the right place? Be clear with yourself about buyers vs end-users.
Speak to your Job to be Done: when communicating the value of your product be sure to speak to their situation, motivation, and outcome (outcomes → benefits → features)
Make your messaging singular: your messaging should only apply to you. If other companies can use your message, you’re not there yet.
Check off their mental shopping list: address buyer intent, not unexpected product results.
Include hard claims: ROI, data, and hard claims are powerful. This takes product instrumentation, customer interviews, and updating sales contracts.
Keep it short: 50% of visitors stay at the top of your site, 25% scroll down, and 10% reach the bottom. We like this quote by Mark Twain as a reminder: “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”
Test your messaging: Experimenting with your messaging is cheaper than experimenting with your product. Use betas to test messaging, not just product. At Olivine, we leverage tools like Wynter to test our messaging with the right audiences and leverage market research tools like SurveyMonkey to run concept tests with larger audiences.
It’s all in the editing! Here are some quotes to remind you of that ;-):
“Good stories are not written. They are rewritten.” - Phylis A. Whitney
“When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing.” - Enrique Jardiel Poncela
“Write without fear. Edit without mercy” - Unknown.
For a deeper dive, check it out here in this video from our B2B Messaging course!
Bringing it all together
Hopefully by now you agree and understand why product positioning and messaging is everything. Very important: remembering the difference between positioning, messaging, and copywriting.
Positioning = where you fit in the market
Messaging = clarity on what you say
Copywriting = cleverness on how you say it
Once you’ve got this down pat, you can follow our five steps for creating product positioning, ensure you capture the six elements of product messaging, and adhere to the ten rules for product positioning and messaging.
We’ve shared a lot of the science that goes into winning positioning and messaging, but if you need more support on the art side of things, reach out to us.
Download our free product
positioning & messaging guide!
.
