Why Product Positioning is Useless

Best product positioning in the galaxy?

Yes.  It’s mostly useless.  A waste of time.  Simply because it’s so very rarely done well at all.

Surprisingly, few people understand the basic concept of product postioning.  They don’t realize that proper product positioning is the foundation of marketing.  They tend to believe that product positioning is a trivial marketing fluff exercise that belongs in some PowerPoint presentation  – which will never be taken seriously by anyone (if seen by anyone at all).

Done correctly, product positioning is the most important thing a marketing person can do.  The downstream return on investment is staggering.

Why the picture of the iPods?  Because of the pretty colors?  No… because Apple has some of the best product positioning the Universe has ever seen.  They understand that product positioning begins BEFORE the product is created (or even in development).  Product positioning is something that is part of the product conception process.