Sep 22, 2020
April Dunford was a repeat vice president of marketing at various tech start-up companies before she finally transitioned into consulting. She focuses on positioning, where she helps customers understand their competition and target market. Listen as she tells Geordie Wardman what she does.
What You Will Learn
- How did April reposition her first product?
- How April and her team discovered the impact of repositioning
- Does your product influence the market? Importance of doing a market study
- The importance of understanding your competition
- April’s journey into understanding positioning. How did she approach it?
- What is April’s advice to start-up companies that do not have enough customers?
- Why small businesses should begin with a thesis before creating a product
- Why companies should identify their target market
- Why you should know who your customer is and who is not
- Importance of copywriting in marketing
- Common mistakes that small businesses make before consulting a professional SaaS company
- Investor expectations vs. customer expectations
In this episode
Many successful entrepreneurs today never achieved success overnight. It took them many years to understand their product, learn and master their competitors, and know their target market. April says her first job was a startup company. As a junior, together with her team they did product repositioning from where she learned two things.
Listen to this conversation to find out these two things. One critical thing that April walked away with was that positioning was crucial for the success of products in the market. At some point, April began teaching about positioning at a local University before transitioning into teaching small businesses.
Today, she is a professional consultant. April gives Geordie a detailed story of her experience with repositioning her first product. This story is interesting, and you need to listen to it to get the concept behind it. While working for the startup, April's role was to conduct a market study to find out how the company’s product was doing in the market. The task involved calling 200 customers.
From her survey, many of their customers were not interested in that product. Rather than focusing on how poorly the product was doing in the market, April and her team brainstormed transformation ideas. Their efforts paid handsomely, and the product received tremendous support and success. She says many customers still use the product to date. According to April, if she were to do it again today, she would pursue a different approach.
Listen as she shares her sentiments with Geordie. How did April come up with the positioning strategy? She tells Geordie how she imagined someone could have done or even documented it (positioning) before. April embarked on research and enrolled in marketing classes. She would later discover a great book about positioning. Listen in to find out which book that is. She says the book was impactful, and many trainers still use it in master classes.
This book explains the importance of positioning in detail, and April believes every marketer should read it. However, she is fast to note that this book will not tell you how to execute positioning. April furthered her studies in marketing school, where she learned more about positioning. Listen to her conversation with Geordie to find out what she gained from the lessons.
In her quest to understand and execute positioning, April broke it down into various component pieces before establishing the best answer for each item. April says figuring the components out was not a difficult task. Listen to understand how she did it. She gives details on the relationship between products, unique features, and a competitive alternative. Listen to understand her explanation precisely.
April opines that many companies only put products on the web, believing that willing customers will use the product. However, companies need to do more to ensure the target audience knows about your brand. She says a SaaS company can help improve the visibility of your product. April reiterates that for every product there is in a crowded market companies should establish who loves the brand and why they do.
Companies should figure out what makes their products unique among their competitors. April speaks about this matter in detail. Listen in to capture everything that she says. She explains that people have numerous reasons for not buying a particular brand. However, your focus should be on the people that love your brand, which she calls a rare event, especially in the current competitive arena.
Remember, people have many choices and can buy anything from anywhere. Understand why they would pick you over the others, to understand what you should change, or improve to meet their expectations. April says selling anything today amid the crowded market is a miracle that businesses should appreciate.