TL;DR

April Dunford, author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch, treats positioning as a set of deliberate choices about who you are best for and why. Her five components are competitive alternatives, differentiated capabilities, value, best-fit customers and market category. For a B2B company entering a new market, such as a Chinese manufacturer or software brand entering Europe, the components must be rebuilt from local evidence: European buyers compare you with different alternatives, value different things and file you in different categories. Positioning that worked at home is a hypothesis in a new market, not a given.

Who April Dunford is and what she argues

April Dunford spent around 25 years leading marketing at technology start-ups and has since advised more than 300 companies, including Google, IBM and Postman, according to her publisher. Her book Obviously Awesome was first published in 2019; an updated second edition followed in February 2026. Her 2023 book Sales Pitch turns positioning into a sales narrative.

Her starting point is that customers often fail to see why a good product matters, because they do not understand what it is or how it compares. Positioning, in her framing, defines how a product is the best at delivering particular value to a specific group of customers who care about that value. It is an input to messaging, branding and sales, not the same thing.

The five components of positioning

In a 2023 talk for the Product Marketing Community, Dunford describes positioning as made of five components:

  1. Competitive alternatives: what customers would do if your product did not exist.
  2. Differentiated capabilities: what you have that those alternatives lack.
  3. Value: the benefit those capabilities deliver.
  4. Best-fit customers: the segment that cares most about that value.
  5. Market category: the frame of reference that tells buyers what you are.

"competitive alternatives are not necessarily competitors." — April Dunford

Alternatives include spreadsheets, an intern, an existing supplier, or simply doing nothing. In Sales Pitch, her publisher's summary describes "do nothing" as the most fearsome competitor a seller faces.

"Your best market category is the category that makes your value obvious" — April Dunford

The process

The first edition of Obviously Awesome set out a ten-step method. Reviewer Yevgeniy Brikman summarises its core: start from your best-fit customers (the happiest ones, who recommend you), list their alternatives, identify your unique attributes, translate features into value themes, determine who cares most about that value, and only then choose a market category. On her podcast, Dunford explains that the second edition condenses this into five steps around the five components, organised into pre-work, core work and post-work.

Three principles run through it. Positioning is a cross-functional team exercise, not a marketing solo, as the Business of Software review emphasises. The order matters: category comes last, chosen to make your value obvious. And positioning should be revisited as markets change; the book suggests roughly every six months or after major shifts. Her workshop materials also describe three broad styles: competing head-to-head in an existing category, winning a niche within one, or creating a new category, which the book describes as expensive and which she flags on her podcast as carrying long-term risks.

Why this matters when entering Europe

A company that is well known at home often arrives in Europe with home-market positioning: the same category, the same comparisons, the same proof points. But each component can change when the buyer changes:

  • Alternatives differ. A European buyer may compare you not with your domestic rivals, but with an established local supplier, a distributor's own brand, an in-house solution, or staying with what they have.
  • Differentiators may not travel. Scale, speed of production or price may impress at home but be assumed, or distrusted, in Europe. Local service, documentation, delivery reliability or data handling may matter more.
  • Category carries baggage. Entering a crowded category as the newcomer can trap you in a price comparison. A narrower category or a niche may make your value clearer.

Playbook: positioning for a new market in ten steps

  1. Assemble a cross-functional team that includes people who speak to European customers: local sales, distributors or partners, plus product and leadership from headquarters.
  2. Agree what you are positioning: one lead product, a product line or the whole company. Dunford treats this as a decision to make before the exercise.
  3. Find your best-fit European customers. If you already have some, interview the happiest ones. If not, use pilot customers and treat the result as a positioning hypothesis.
  4. List local competitive alternatives, including "do nothing" and "keep the current supplier". Ask customers what they used before and who else they considered.
  5. List capabilities that are genuinely different from those alternatives, not from your home-market rivals.
  6. Translate each capability into value for the European buyer. Apply a "So what?" test, as Dunford recommends, until you reach an outcome a budget-holder cares about.
  7. Narrow to the segment that cares most: one country, sector or company size where your value is strongest.
  8. Choose the category last, picking the frame that makes your value obvious to that segment. Decide consciously between head-to-head, niche or new category.
  9. Build the sales narrative from the positioning, so every component shows up in how you sell. In Sales Pitch, differentiated value is the centrepiece of the pitch and the buyer's option to do nothing is treated as a serious alternative.
  10. Test, then revisit. Use the narrative in real sales conversations and adjust after the first deals and after any major market change.

Common mistakes

  • Translating instead of repositioning. A fluent translation of home-market copy keeps home-market logic.
  • Leading with category creation. An aspirational new category can confuse buyers who do not yet know your brand; Dunford flags these risks on her podcast.
  • Positioning against the wrong rival. The competitor HQ worries about may not be the alternative European buyers consider.
  • Treating price as the differentiator. If low price is the only reason to choose you, buyers will compare you on price alone.
Key takeaways
  • Dunford's five components are competitive alternatives, differentiated capabilities, value, best-fit customers and market category.
  • Start from customers and alternatives; choose the market category last.
  • In a new market, every component must be re-examined with local evidence.
  • Turn positioning into a sales narrative and test it in real conversations.

FAQ

Is positioning the same as messaging?
No. Dunford describes positioning as an input to messaging, branding and sales. Messaging expresses the positioning; it cannot fix positioning that is unclear.
Should a Chinese brand hide its origin when entering Europe?
Dunford's method does not prescribe this. The question to ask is whether origin strengthens or weakens your value for best-fit customers compared with their alternatives, and to test that with real buyers.
How often should we revisit positioning?
The book suggests about every six months, or after events that reshape the market, such as a new competitor, a major product change or entry into a new country.

Sources

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