Obviously Awesome

Why is your product amazing to you but confusing to everyone else? In Obviously Awesome, April Dunford argues that the problem isn’t with your product, your marketing, or your salespeople—it’s with your positioning. The way you frame your product determines whether the world sees value or noise. Dunford contends that positioning is not about clever slogans or niche branding—it’s the act of deliberately defining how you’re the best at something your market cares about. Without that clarity, even great products are ignored.

Through a blend of personal experience, storytelling, and a 10-step practical framework, Dunford shows how you can shift the context around your offering to make its strengths irresistible to the right people. She uses relatable stories—from a violinist playing in a subway to bakers confused about whether they sell muffins or cake—to show how powerful context is in shaping perception and value.

Positioning as Context

Think of positioning as the set of clues you give people so they can quickly understand who you are, what you do, and why it matters. When Joshua Bell, one of the world’s greatest violinists, played in a subway station, people walked past without noticing. It wasn’t that he suddenly became less talented; it was that he was missing the context—a concert hall, tickets, elegant attire—that told listeners they were seeing greatness. Products are no different. Without the right context, customers can’t see your value—they merely see another face in the crowd.

Dunford teaches that positioning isn’t predetermined by what your product is supposed to do—it’s a strategic choice. You can reposition the same offering to highlight its most valuable attributes. Her famous cake-versus-muffin analogy underscores this perfectly: the same batter could be positioned as cake (a fancy dessert) or muffin (a breakfast staple). The key is finding the frame that makes the product’s unique strengths shine. This becomes even more critical as markets shift, trends evolve, and customer preferences change.

Why Positioning Matters More Than Ever

In 1981, Al Ries and Jack Trout introduced the concept of positioning in Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind. But, as Dunford points out, they never told anyone how to actually do it. With today’s information overload, having clear positioning isn’t just helpful—it’s survival. Every customer scrolling through app stores, social platforms, and search engines faces a flood of choices. Without well-defined context, your product becomes invisible, regardless of quality.

Dunford reframes positioning as the foundation of every business function: marketing, sales, product design, even pricing. Poor positioning drags down every tactic. It’s like trying to make an omelet with rotten eggs—no matter how skilled the cook, nobody will buy what you’re serving. Great positioning, however, acts like a tailwind, making all other efforts more effective.

A Proven Process, Not Guesswork

Drawing from two decades as a marketing executive and consultant, Dunford condenses the art of positioning into a replicable science—the 10-Step Positioning Process. She uses case studies from tech startups, SaaS companies, and well-known brands to demonstrate how changing positioning transforms results. Through steps like understanding your happiest customers, identifying true competitive alternatives, and finding the right frame of reference, she maps a path from confusion to clarity.

This deliberate process contrasts with the way most teams approach positioning: by “mucking around” until something works. Dunford’s step-by-step method removes guesswork. By defining your competitive set, mapping unique attributes to real value, targeting the right segment, and choosing the best market category, you transform what seems abstract into an actionable blueprint.

Who This Book Is For

Dunford writes for anyone who needs their audience to “get it” instantly—founders, entrepreneurs, marketers, product leaders, and sales executives. If your ideal customers don’t understand what makes you special, or if your pitches feel like uphill battles, this book is written for you. She also highlights that weak positioning can masquerade as other business problems: long sales cycles, low conversion, high churn, or price sensitivity. Fixing positioning often fixes them all.

Making It Obvious—and Awesome

Positioning done right makes your product’s greatness obvious—customers intuitively grasp your unique value and care deeply about it. Dunford’s blend of pragmatism and humor makes what could be an academic subject feel dynamic, practical, even exciting. Like Michael Porter’s view of strategy as “choosing to be different,” Dunford’s version of positioning celebrates clarity, focus, and honest distinctiveness.

By the end of her book, you understand more than just what positioning is—you know exactly how to do it. You see your product through your customers’ eyes, express its value in the clearest context, and turn that understanding into traction. Dunford shows that the world doesn’t magically recognize excellence—it recognizes meaning. Your job is to define that meaning so clearly that your product becomes, as she puts it, “obviously awesome.”

Dunford begins by redefining positioning not as messaging, but as context—the mental frame through which customers interpret what your product is and why it matters. Like the opening scene of a film, positioning sets expectations. Without it, your audience has no idea what kind of story they’re watching—or whether it’s worth their attention.

The Joshua Bell Experiment: Value Needs Framing

The famous Washington Post experiment where violinist Joshua Bell performed world-class music in a subway station perfectly illustrates Dunford’s point. Out of over a thousand passersby, only seven stopped to listen. In the wrong context, even supreme skill is invisible. Similarly, a brilliant product can flop if potential customers can’t see its worth in the frame you’ve given them. In the concert hall, Bell is a virtuoso; in the subway, he’s mere background noise. Your business context works the same way.

The Two Positioning Traps

Dunford outlines two common traps founders fall into. First, the default trap: assuming your product can only be positioned one way—usually the way you first conceived it. Second, the market-shift trap: sticking to old positioning even after the market has evolved. Her “cake versus muffin” story helps you spot the first trap: the same batter could become a “small cake” (luxury dessert) or a “large muffin” (everyday snack). Your audience determines what’s valuable depending on how you frame it.

For the second trap, Dunford describes how a “diet muffin” can become a “gluten-free paleo snack.” The market didn’t move away from healthy eating—it changed how it described that concept. Companies often fail to reframe when markets shift, becoming irrelevant even with great products.

Deliberate Positioning, Not Default Positioning

Deliberate positioning means purposely selecting the frame that emphasizes your unique strengths—not what you originally planned, or what everyone assumes. Dunford’s database startup story captures this perfectly. Initially pitched as a new database, customers ignored it; they already had databases. But when she reframed it as a data warehouse—something designed for fast analytics—buyers finally saw its value. The product didn’t change, but context turned rejection into traction.

That shift also changed the team’s identity. They saw themselves differently, focused development on analytics strengths, and began leading in a new market. This story underscores one of Dunford’s core lessons: your internal perception of your product must align with the way customers see it. When those two clash, you lose clarity and customers.

Positioning as the Foundation of Strategy

Positioning sets the stage for everything else—pricing, features, branding, messaging. As Dunford quips, even perfect marketing can’t fix bad positioning. Like the artist Marina Abramović observes, “context makes the difference.” A baker in a gallery isn’t just a baker—they’re an artist. With deliberate positioning, your company can transform from an unnoticed commodity into an essential leader. The key is learning, as Dunford insists, to “find out who you are and do it on purpose.”

After showing how vital context is, Dunford methodically breaks positioning into what she calls “The Five (Plus One) Components of Effective Positioning.” Each one defines your product’s clarity and relevance in the market. Together, they form the blueprint for your strategy.

1. Competitive Alternatives

Positioning only exists in contrast. You must know what your customers would do if your product didn’t exist. Often, it’s not who you think: spreadsheets, in-house hacks, or “doing nothing” are frequently your real competition. Dunford warns against obsessing over rival startups no one’s heard of; the true competitive set lives in your buyer’s daily reality. You can’t claim to be “easier” or “cheaper” unless customers see you as easier or cheaper than the thing they actually use.

2. Unique Attributes

These are the concrete features, capabilities, or characteristics that set your product apart. They might include proprietary technology, a special delivery model, or deep market expertise. But they must be provable. “We have great service” is meaningless unless you can show evidence—faster response times or higher satisfaction ratings. For service firms, unique attributes might be niche expertise (“the only UX agency for enterprise training design”), not abstract claims.

3. Value (and Proof)

Attributes matter only because they produce outcomes. Each feature should tie directly to measurable customer value: time saved, errors reduced, revenue grown. Dunford distinguishes between qualitative hopes and quantitative proof. Real proof includes data, testimonials, or third-party validation. It’s not enough to say your tool improves productivity—you must demonstrate by how much and why it matters.

4. Target Market Characteristics

Not everyone values your product equally. Great positioning zeroes in on the people who love you most—your “best-fit customers.” These customers buy quickly, pay happily, and become advocates. Dunford shows that defining them requires behavioral rather than demographic data. For B2B products, consider who sends the most invoices, not just company size. For consumer goods, think of who feels the pain most acutely. Focus marketing on these segments first, then expand.

5. Market Category

Market category gives customers a mental shortcut—they instantly understand what universe your product belongs to. However, the category you choose triggers assumptions about competitors, features, and pricing. If your product is called “email software,” people expect calendars and folders; if it’s “team collaboration,” they’ll forgive missing email features. Dunford’s story of a startup that rebranded their “email for lawyers” as “team collaboration for legal professionals” shows how the right category can unlock understanding and growth.

(Bonus) 6. Relevant Trends

Trends can make your solution feel timely and urgent. They answer the question, “Why now?” Dunford cautions, though, to use trends sparingly—they should reinforce, not replace, your category. For instance, Marie Chevrier’s company Sampler aligned with the “direct-to-consumer” trend to make old-fashioned product sampling feel modern and strategic. A trend gives momentum; it shouldn’t distort your identity.

When you link these components—from real competitors to valued features, to the right market context—you give your product a coherent story. Every decision flows from this structure, which is precisely why Dunford insists: positioning is the foundation of your business strategy, not a line on your website.

Dunford’s signature framework translates theory into action through ten structured steps. The goal is to move from vague assumptions about your product to deliberate context that magnifies its brilliance. Each step builds upon the previous one.

Steps 1–3: Preparation and Mindset

Step 1: Identify the customers who love your product most—those who “get it” immediately. Study their behaviors and stories. Their patterns reveal where your true value lies. Step 2: Build a cross-functional positioning team with marketing, sales, product, and leadership. Everyone holds different assumptions, and alignment is key. Step 3: Agree on language, shed your “positioning baggage,” and be open to new frames. As the Clearpath Robotics story shows, letting go of the “robot” label—and shifting to “autonomous vehicles”—can unlock massive reappraisal.

Steps 4–6: Discovering Your Differentiation

Step 4: List your true competitive alternatives based on what customers would use instead. Ignore vanity competitors. Step 5: Identify your unique attributes—features, processes, or assets others can’t match. Step 6: Map those attributes to specific value “themes.” For example, Redgate Software maps “database automation” to “time saved and error reduction.” This progression turns features into business meaning.

Steps 7–9: Finding Your Place in the Market

Step 7: Determine who cares most about your value. Dunford cautions that if your target is “everyone,” you’ll win no one. Focus on segments where your advantages matter deeply. Step 8: Choose your market frame—where you’ll compete. Options include entering an existing market (Head to Head), dominating a subsegment (Big Fish, Small Pond), or creating a new category (Create a New Game). Step 9: Layer on relevant trends to make your product timely—just like Redgate aligned its “database tools” with the DevOps movement to double leads and relevance.

Step 10: Making It Stick

Finally, capture your new positioning in a sharable format—a positioning canvas—and communicate it to your entire organization. Positioning isn’t a marketing exercise; it’s a shared lens that informs product design, messaging, sales strategy, and even pricing. Dunford suggests having both a detailed document and a one-page canvas connecting category, competitors, attributes, value, and ideal customer. Once codified, everyone from developers to CEOs should be able to articulate why your product is obviously awesome.

This process demystifies what’s usually treated as intuition. It turns positioning into a repeatable business discipline. As Dunford shows, when teams stop guessing and start defining, their products stop struggling and start selling.

Once you understand your value and audience, the next big choice is how to compete. Dunford simplifies this into three “styles” of positioning: Head to Head, Big Fish, Small Pond, and Create a New Game. Each fits different stages, goals, and resources.

1. Head to Head: Competing in an Existing Market

This style suits companies already leading or fighting for dominance in well-defined markets. You’re not redefining the rules—you’re beating competitors at their own game. Dunford notes that this is tough for startups. Competing directly with giants like Oracle or Coke requires enormous resources and impeccable execution. But when no clear leader yet exists (e.g., early smart glasses), you can seize that position quickly.

Her story about transforming a failed “database” into a “data warehouse” illustrates a Head to Head win: by switching to an adjacent but established category without a dominant player, her startup immediately gained credibility and pricing power.

2. Big Fish, Small Pond: Owning a Subsegment

This is the startup sweet spot. Instead of fighting the global leader, you dominate a niche with unmet needs. Dunford’s experience at Janna Systems proves this approach. Competing against Siebel, the enterprise CRM giant, Janna repositioned itself as “CRM for investment banks.” That shift turned them from a “cheaper Siebel” into an indispensable specialist. Their revenue exploded from $2 million to $70 million, and the eventual $1.7 billion acquisition followed.

This approach requires defining a segment with shared, urgent pain points and proving that the general leader underserves them. It’s about focus—doing for one group what the incumbent can’t or won’t do.

3. Create a New Game: Building a Category

When your product doesn’t fit any existing category, you invent one. But Dunford warns—it’s the hardest path. You must first teach the world that your problem exists. Then you must define how your solution uniquely solves it, and finally, make people care. Examples like Eloqua’s creation of the “marketing automation” category show that new-game creators set the rules but also shoulder the heaviest lift.

Eloqua’s Mark Organ started with “demand generation automation,” serving a small audience of “demand gen freaks.” As those attitudes spread, his niche became mainstream. This reinforces Dunford’s insight: new categories emerge when niche behaviors—“the freaks”—go mainstream, not when a company simply declares a name on a slide deck.

Each style balances reward and risk differently. Head to Head offers scale but fierce competition; Big Fish, Small Pond trades scope for clarity; Create a New Game brings massive potential but needs patience and funding. Choosing the right one is how you tilt the market to your advantage.

Positioning isn’t complete once defined—it must be implemented across your company. Dunford’s final chapters explain how to translate positioning into action through storytelling, messaging, alignment, and iteration.

Crafting the Sales Story

The first step after defining your position is crafting a sales narrative that embodies it. Dunford suggests starting every pitch with the problem your product solves, not the product itself. Then explain how customers currently attempt to solve it—and where those efforts fall short. Paint the “perfect world” scenario that your product makes possible, then introduce your offering as the bridge to that world.

This story arc shifts customer focus from features to transformation. It changes “what is this?” into “I need this.” Dunford emphasizes internal alignment: if salespeople, marketers, and product teams don’t tell the same story, positioning fractures.

Messaging, Product, and Pricing

Once the sales story aligns, marketing can translate it into messaging documents used across campaigns, web copy, and collateral. Dunford encourages maintaining a “master messaging doc” as the single truth source to prevent drift. Positioning also guides product roadmaps. For instance, when Wave Accounting repositioned as financial software (not just accounting), it expanded into payments, payroll, and credit—turning reframing into revenue. Likewise, pricing must reflect the new market context. Premium positioning requires premium price expectations.

Iterate as the Market Shifts

Finally, positioning isn’t static. Dunford advises reviewing it every six months or after major market changes—new competitors, regulations, economics, or customer preferences. She recounts how economic downturns shift buyer focus from growth to cost-cutting, altering value messages. She also shares the story of a CIO admiring a purple-lit server—proof that even technical buyers can respond to emotional “coolness.” As markets evolve, so should the frame through which customers evaluate value.

In short, positioning is never one-and-done—it’s a living part of your business strategy. Get it right, and everything else—marketing, sales, growth—flows more easily because the world finally sees what makes your product obviously awesome.