# PositioningPositioningThe mental space you want your brand to occupy in your target customer's mind relative to alternatives.View full definition → to win in a crowded SaaS category
A founder demos her new project-management tool to a prospect. It has tasks, boards, timelines, and a clean interface. The prospect nods, then asks the question that kills the deal: "So how is this different from Asana?"
She has no answer that survives ten seconds of scrutiny. That silence is a positioningpositioningThe mental space you want your brand to occupy in your target customer's mind relative to alternatives.View full definition → failure, not a product failure.
This lesson uses April Dunford's framework to escape the "me-too" trap. The core move: stop competing head-on and change the game by shifting your competitive alternative and reframing the category you compete in.
In crowded SaaS categories, "better than Asana" is a trap. Asana and Monday.com have larger budgets, more integrations, and years of brand recognitionbrand recognitionThe degree to which your target audience recognises or recalls your brand, either prompted or unprompted. It measures how present your brand is in people's minds.View full definition →. If you compete on the same terms, you compete on their terms, and you lose.
PositioningPositioningThe mental space you want your brand to occupy in your target customer's mind relative to alternatives.View full definition → is the context you set so buyers understand what your product is, who it is for, and why it is the obvious choice. It is not a tagline. It is the frame around everything: your pricing, your demo, your sales pitch.
Bad positioningpositioningThe mental space you want your brand to occupy in your target customer's mind relative to alternatives.View full definition → defaults to whatever the market assumes. If your buyer assumes you are "another project-management tool," you inherit every comparison to the category leaders. Good positioningpositioningThe mental space you want your brand to occupy in your target customer's mind relative to alternatives.View full definition → deliberately chooses a frame where you win.
April Dunford's book *Obviously Awesome* lays out positioningpositioningThe mental space you want your brand to occupy in your target customer's mind relative to alternatives.View full definition → as a sequence of building blocks. Here is the short version.
1. Competitive alternatives. What would customers do if you did not exist? This is rarely just "the other software." It might be spreadsheets, email threads, or a project manager doing it manually.
2. Unique attributes. Features or capabilities you have that the alternatives lack.
3. Value. The benefit those attributes deliver, stated in terms the buyer cares about.
4. Target customers. The buyers who care most about that value.
5. Market category. The frame that makes your value obvious. This is the lever most teams ignore.
The insight: your competitive alternative and your chosen category are choices, not facts handed to you. Change them and everything downstream changes.
Dunford's own site has a clear, free primer worth reading: aprildunford.com.
Our fictional tool, call it "BuildFlow," is a project-management app aimed at construction and trades businesses (electricians, general contractors, renovation crews).
The lazy competitive alternative is Asana. But ask the real question: what do construction crews actually use today to manage jobs?
The honest answer is usually a mix of:
That is the true competitive alternative. Most construction firms are not choosing between BuildFlow and Asana. They tried a generic tool once, found it built for software teams, and went back to spreadsheets.
Reframing the alternative changes the conversation. You are no longer the weaker Asana. You are the tool that replaces the chaos of texts and spreadsheets for people the generic tools ignored.
When your alternative is "spreadsheets and group texts," your unique attributes suddenly look strong: mobile-first for people in the field, photo attachments per task, offline access on a job site with no signal, and job costing built in.
Against Asana, those are niche features. Against a spreadsheet, they are transformative.
Category is the mental shelf your buyer puts you on. Put yourself on the wrong shelf and you get judged by the wrong criteria.
"Project management software" is a crowded, mature shelf. On that shelf, buyers expect Gantt charts, integrations, and a low price relative to giants who can subsidize with scale.
BuildFlow should not fight for that shelf. It should claim a different one: construction job management software, or more specifically, field operations software for trades.
On that new shelf:
You are not inventing a fake market. Field operations and vertical construction software is a real, established category with real competitors (Procore and Buildertrend, among others). The point is that this is the correct arena, where BuildFlow's attributes are strengths, not footnotes.
🎬 [VIDEO: "April Dunford on PositioningPositioningThe mental space you want your brand to occupy in your target customer's mind relative to alternatives.View full definition →" — youtube.com — Dunford explains why category choice is the highest-leverage positioningpositioningThe mental space you want your brand to occupy in your target customer's mind relative to alternatives.View full definition → decision, with concrete B2B examples]
Once the category shifts, rewrite the value in that category's language.
Weak (generic PM frame):
> "BuildFlow helps teams organize tasks and collaborate."
Strong (field operations frame):
> "BuildFlow keeps every job on schedule and on budget, so crews stop losing hours to missed updates and rework."
Notice the vocabulary. "On budget," "rework," "crews," "job." These words signal to a contractor that you understand their world. A generic tool talking about "tasks" and "workflows" signals the opposite.
Value must mapmapUsing software to automate repetitive marketing tasks and campaigns, enabling personalisation at scale across channels like email, web, and social.View full definition → to attributes that mapmapUsing software to automate repetitive marketing tasks and campaigns, enabling personalisation at scale across channels like email, web, and social.View full definition → to the alternative you chose. Offline mode matters because spreadsheets do not work on a phone in a basement. Photo-per-task matters because a group text buries the photo of the wrong wiring under fifty other messages.
PositioningPositioningThe mental space you want your brand to occupy in your target customer's mind relative to alternatives.View full definition → gets sharper as the target narrows. "Project teams" is too broad. "Small to mid-size general contractors and specialty trades in residential renovation" is specific enough to shape everything: the demo, the case studies, the ad targeting.
A tighter target does not shrink your market. It makes your message land hard with the people most likely to buy, and word of mouth within a trade travels fast.
Knowledge check
1. According to the lesson, why is the prospect's question 'How is this different from Asana?' described as a positioning failure rather than a product failure?
2. Why does the lesson argue that positioning your product as 'better than Asana' is a losing bet in a crowded category?
3. In Dunford's framework, why is identifying 'competitive alternatives' about more than just rival software?
4. Select ALL correct answers about how the lesson defines positioning.
Select all the correct answers.
5. Select ALL correct answers describing the correct ordering logic of Dunford's building blocks.
Select all the correct answers.
Here is BuildFlow's positioningpositioningThe mental space you want your brand to occupy in your target customer's mind relative to alternatives.View full definition → restated cleanly.
Compare that to where we started ("another project-management tool, but better"). Same product. Completely different competitive position. The Asana question no longer applies, because Asana is not on this shelf.
Repositioning without the product to back it. If you claim the field operations category but your app has no offline mode and no job costing, buyers feel the gap immediately. PositioningPositioningThe mental space you want your brand to occupy in your target customer's mind relative to alternatives.View full definition → frames real strengths, it does not manufacture them.
Choosing a category no one is searching for. Reframing works only if buyers recognize the new frame. "Construction job management" is a term contractors understand. An invented buzzword is not. Check demand: look at search terms, competitor language, and how prospects describe their own problem.
Reframing once and stopping. PositioningPositioningThe mental space you want your brand to occupy in your target customer's mind relative to alternatives.View full definition → is not a one-time exercise. As you move upmarket or add a segment, the right alternative and category can change. Revisit it at least annually or after a major product shift.
Confusing positioning with messaging. PositioningPositioningThe mental space you want your brand to occupy in your target customer's mind relative to alternatives.View full definition → is the strategic frame. Messaging is the words on the site. Get positioningpositioningThe mental space you want your brand to occupy in your target customer's mind relative to alternatives.View full definition → right first, then the messaging writes itself.