Playbooks · positioning
Say the job, not the feature
Rewrite your homepage headline around the job your customer is trying to get done, then check it with three real people.
People don’t buy features. They hire your product to get a job done. “Stop hand-making 40 product images every morning” is a job. “Template-based image generation” is a feature. Same product, very different reaction.
When positioning is off, everything downstream feels hard: cold emails get ignored, the homepage gets nods but no sign-ups. It looks like a marketing problem. Usually it’s the first sentence.
The steps
- Write the headline as a job. Use the format “[Who] can finally [job they’re trying to get done].” No feature words allowed.
- Ask three real people. Send it to three actual customers or prospects with one question: “Is this the reason you’d use it? If not, what is?”
- Use their words, not yours. Swap the headline. Leave it for two weeks before judging it.
Go deeper
- Read it in context: Issue #1.
- Book: Obviously Awesome by April Dunford, the clearest book on positioning.