What is a positioning statement?

What a positioning statement contains

The statement uses the For, who, Unlike shape from Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm (1991). In our method, each line is filled by one step of the method below.

1. For: the target customer, named as a buyer seat, such as an identity architect.
2. who: the situation or pressure that buyer is in.
3. <Product> is a: the market category, the frame a buyer compares you within.
4. that: the value the product delivers, in the buyer's terms.
5. Unlike: the top competitive alternative, named. One alternative, never "competitors".
6. <Product>: the difference, traced to an attribute an outsider could check.

The six lines are only the front page. The full document our method produces carries more. It holds the ranked alternatives with evidence, a proof status for every claim, a reasoning trail, and a list of what you deliberately do not claim. The method keeps that last list because the claims you refuse are part of the position.

The nine steps that produce one

Steps 2 to 6 follow April Dunford's method from her book Obviously Awesome (2019). Her books page says the book breaks positioning into five component pieces (aprildunford.com/books, read 2026-10-14). Steps 1, 7, 8 and 9 are our own, and the words throughout are ours.

1. Load the context. Read any brand point of view and the current positioning, then the live site and each alternative's public claims, and date every source. Name one buyer seat; "security buyer" is a category, not a reader.
2. List what buyers do today. Rank the real alternatives, each with its evidence. The method always adds doing nothing and a person with a spreadsheet.
3. Keep only attributes an outsider can check. The test is whether someone outside the company could confirm it by looking, trying or reading. "Better UX" fails.
4. Turn each attribute into one value line. Delete an attribute whose value no buyer would notice. Merge two attributes that give the same value.
5. Find who cares a lot. Describe that buyer by situation, constraint and what is on fire, not by demographics.
6. Test the category. List what a buyer would then assume about price, buying process and who signs. If those assumptions are wrong, so is the category.
7. Run the proof pass. Sort every claim into proven now, not yet proven, and required before it can be claimed. Name the artifact that would prove each gap, and its owner.
8. Assemble the statement and the trail. Write the six lines. For each choice, add one line on the runner-up and why it lost, then the do-not-claim list.
9. Hand off the open questions. Strategic questions go back to a person, unanswered, and the rest goes to messaging.

The refusal rule. The method will not run on an imagined competitor set. At least two alternatives must trace to something observed, such as a buyer quote, a review or a lost deal. An alternative with no evidence is labelled ASSUMED and cannot rank first. Changing the audience or claiming a new category is a decision for a person, so the method drafts the options and escalates.

Worked sample: Figma's homepage, read against the six lines

"The full-stack creative canvas"

Button: "Get started"

Read on 2026-10-14. Source: Figma homepage

That is the H1 and the button under it. The first section below the hero reads:

"Move fast in the right direction on an AI-native canvas."

"Teammates and AI agents work in the same space with shared context. Generate new ideas, refine, and align—together."

Read on 2026-10-14. Source: Figma homepage

The browser tab title, which is not hero copy, reads "Figma: The collaborative canvas for design, code, and AI". In our method, a homepage is written on top of a positioning, so it is not the statement itself. In our view, you can still read one against the six lines to see which choices the copy has made.

What the copy does well. The H1 commits to a category in four words: a canvas, and a "full-stack" one. That fills line 3. "Generate new ideas, refine, and align" is value written as what the reader gets, which fills line 4. "Move fast in the right direction" names a pressure, which is the raw material of line 2. "Teammates and AI agents work in the same space with shared context" describes how the product works. That is the kind of attribute step 3 asks for, and a reader would check it by using the product, not by reading the page.

What is missing, against the lines. Line 1 is open: "teammates" names no buyer seat. Line 5 is open: nothing on the quoted copy says what the reader uses today. Line 6 depends on line 5. In our view, a difference only means something next to the thing it beats. So the copy has made three of the six choices.

The six lines, filled from the page. Each filled slot uses the page's own words, lightly rephrased. The open slots stay questions, because the public page does not say who the buyer is or what they use instead.

For      [the buyer seat that cares most: needs evidence]
who      need to move fast in the right direction
Figma    is a full-stack creative canvas
that     lets teammates and AI agents generate, refine and align ideas in one space with shared context
Unlike   [what these buyers use today: needs evidence]
Figma    [the difference, traced to an attribute an outsider can check: needs evidence]

Common mistakes

• Writing "competitors" in the Unlike line. The method's quality bar names one alternative. The word "competitors", plural and unnamed, does not appear.
• Picking the rival that is easiest to beat. The method ranks alternatives by what buyers really do, with evidence. In the method's words, a rival chosen for convenience wins an argument nobody is having.
• Leaving out doing nothing and the spreadsheet. The method adds both to every list. Rank them honestly, even when one of them is the alternative to beat.
• Keeping attributes nobody can check. If an outsider could not confirm it by looking, trying or reading, drop it before it reaches the "that" line.
• Claiming a new category inside the draft. In our method, a category nobody has claimed before is a strategic call. Write the options and the tradeoff, and let a person decide.
• Shipping the six lines without the proof pass. Each claim needs a status. A claim not yet proven names the artifact that would prove it, and its owner. Claims you refuse go on the do-not-claim list.

Questions people ask

What makes a positioning statement bad?

A bad statement fails one of these tests from our method's quality bar. The Unlike line says "competitors" instead of naming one alternative. The top alternative has no evidence behind it. An attribute has no route an outsider could follow to check it. Or the proof status does not separate what is proven from what is not. In our view, each one makes the statement easy to write and hard to defend.

How is a positioning statement different from a value proposition?

In our view, the value proposition is one line of the statement: the "that" line. The statement adds the buyer, their situation, the category, the named alternative and the difference. The value proposition vs positioning statement guide compares the two side by side.

Sources

• Obviously Awesome, April Dunford, 2019 (book)
• April Dunford, Books, https://www.aprildunford.com/books, read 2026-10-14
• Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey A. Moore, 1991 (book)
• Figma homepage, https://www.figma.com/, read 2026-10-14
• Perplexity follow-up suggestions on "what is a positioning statement", read 2026-10-13
• Our positioning-statement method skill and the Positioning statement tool on this site (ours, read 2026-10-14)