Vision, Positioning, Messaging
Move from a founder's point of view to a market position and resonant messages.
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 99%
Vision, Positioning, Messaging is a sequential strategy for turning a company's point of view into communication that resonates with customers. Vision defines the real problem being solved, the differentiated approach, and the successive acts of customer progress the company intends to enable. Positioning then determines whether the company belongs in an existing category or must create a new one, and clarifies how it differs within that competitive frame. Messaging converts the chosen position into language used across websites, email, content, and other customer interactions. The sequence also clarifies ownership: founders or the CEO primarily own vision; the CEO, product leader, and marketing leader collaborate on positioning; marketing owns delivery of the messaging. Skipping stages creates unsupported copy, inconsistent claims, or a story detached from the company's actual direction.
Origin
Extracted from Marketing Against The Grain as Kipp Bodnar and Kieran Flanagan distinguished company vision from product positioning and downstream messaging.
Core principles
- 01Vision begins with a point of view about a real customer problem.
- 02Positioning decides where and how the company will compete.
- 03Category choice shapes the positioning strategy.
- 04Messaging translates positioning into audience-facing language.
- 05Ownership shifts as work moves from vision to positioning to messaging.
How to run it
- 1
Define the vision
Articulate the real customer problem, why it matters, and the differentiated progress the company intends to create over multiple acts.
Pro tip Describe more than the first product feature; show how the customer's situation can improve over time.
Watch out A crafted brand story is not a substitute for an authentic strategic point of view.
- 2
Choose the category
Decide whether the product will compete in a category customers already understand or establish a new category with different expectations.
Pro tip Use an existing category when its frame helps customers understand the value without hiding the differentiation.
Watch out Creating a new category demands substantial education and should not be chosen merely to sound original.
- 3
Establish the position
Define how the company or product is meaningfully different within the selected category and why the target audience should care.
Pro tip Develop positioning through a small working group spanning executive, product, and marketing perspectives.
Watch out Do not confuse positioning with the final words that appear on a homepage.
- 4
Translate position into messaging
Turn the strategic position into clear audience-facing language for the website, email, content, sales materials, and product communication.
Pro tip Adapt the language to customers while keeping every expression traceable to the same position.
Watch out Messaging created independently of positioning tends to become generic or inconsistent.
- 5
Assign ownership by skill
Give each stage to the people with the strongest relevant capability: executive leadership for vision, a cross-functional group for positioning, and marketing for messaging execution.
Pro tip Judge ownership by the core skill required rather than by department names alone.
Watch out Separated brand and product-marketing teams can produce conflicting messages without explicit decision rights.
In the wild
Kipp explains that HubSpot began with helping small businesses sell online, expanded into helping companies adopt inbound marketing, and anticipated eventually reaching CRM. The layered vision established a direction larger than the first offering, from which the company could position products and build messages.
→ Successive products and messages could reinforce a coherent long-term account of customer progress.
The hosts reconsider Loom as an example and identify an underlying vision: make communication better than lengthy email, then help entire teams communicate with more context and personality than email or Slack provides. The product could become a hit before its polished positioning was fully developed, but the problem-level vision still existed.
→ A differentiated product gained a foundation for broader team-level positioning and messaging.
A startup defines its vision as helping freelancers turn irregular income into predictable financial decisions. It chooses the established cash-flow software category, positions itself around freelancer-specific forecasting, and translates that position into homepage and onboarding messages using customers' everyday language.
→ Customers quickly understand both the product category and its distinctive relevance to them.
Common mistakes
Starting with messaging
Writing homepage copy before establishing vision and positioning produces language with no stable strategic foundation.
Confusing vision with positioning
Vision describes the customer progress and point of view, while positioning determines the competitive and category frame. Treating them as identical obscures necessary decisions.
Assigning work by department label
A team may nominally own positioning without possessing the required brand skill. Ownership should follow capability and explicit decision rights.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for founders and marketing leaders launching, repositioning, or clarifying a product or company.
Not ideal for
It is not ideal when the company lacks a genuine customer problem, differentiated point of view, or leadership commitment.
From the transcript
“So those are the three steps: Vision, Positioning, Messaging.”
“what vision really is, is an articulation of multiple acts of progress you're going to make to help a customer, right?”
“Are you playing in an existing category of known things or are you creating a new category?”
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