What is the Positioning Canvas? The case of ProtonMail.
Positioning is a core part of marketing any product. Indeed, having an effective positioning determines whether a product fits into the market. As a way to achieve that, April Dunford proposes a new positioning methodology: the Positioning Canvas. In this blogpost, I am writing about this new framework and I elaborate on the example of ProtonMail, a SaaS B2C product from Proton Technologies.
In her book “Obviously Awesome”, April Dunford argues that positioning statements, a commonly used positioning tool, are outdated. While positioning statements grasp some aspects of positioning, the tool does not allow a Marketer to build on that and come up with follow-up actions. In other words, it's not very useful. As an improvement, she introduces the Positioning Canvas, a new theoretical framework with five core positioning components broken down. Let's take a deeper look at each component:
1. Market Category: The market context of your product.
This is where you describe the market landscape within which your product is playing the game, and sets the limits for your product's whereabouts. By stating the market category you believe you are part of, you “trigger a set of powerful assumptions in the customer’s mind” says April Dunford, meaning that you help customers be aware and informed of what approximately you offer them.
2. Competitive Alternatives: What would customers do if you didn’t exist?
In the positioning process, you need to know to whom you will position against. Ask yourself, how, if at all, are the existing customer pain points addressed now and by who. Here, you add your competitive intel. It is important to note that while you the Positioner should be an expert in the solutions field of your market category, the customer is rarely aware of all the solutions.
3. Key Unique Attributes: The features you have and the alternatives lack.
There must be something about your product that sets it apart from competing players. These differentiators can be product features, but also unique capabilities, business models, or even human expertise. Usually, these unique attributes are the first things companies include in their messaging.
4. Enabled Value + Proof: The benefits that those features enable for customers
Value is the benefit the customer enjoys from your product. It is effortlessly derived from your product’s unique attributes. The value of your product combined with fact-based evidence of it, provides a compelling value proposition.
5. Customer Segments that Care: The people who deeply care about your product’s value.
Imagine that you must sell a lot of your product in a week’s time otherwise something bad will happen, and ask yourself: to whom would I sell? That is your customer segment. A group of people that are highly likely to buy from you because they care about the value you bring to the market. People who, according to April Dunford (1) buy quickly, (2) don't ask for discounts, and (3) spread the word to others about your product. Here should also add which characteristics, whether demographic, behavioral, or psychographic, increase your customer segment’s likelihood to buy.
The Case for ProtonMail’s Positioning Canvas
In the case of ProtonMail, let’s say it plays the game inside a Market Category where there is a need for people to communicate amounts of information quickly and which is filled with companies providing online communication platforms to address this need. ProtonMail can be specified further as an Email Service Provider (ESP), considering that it provides specifically email services, and furthermore as an end-to-end encrypted ESP.
To understand the Competitive Alternatives, we need to ask: if people need to exchange letters with speed while far away, who are they using right now to deal with this need? It might be Gmail, which provides a beautiful interface as well as the greater Google infrastructure with free Calendar, GoogleMeet, and so on. It might be Outlook Mail with a vast array of features yet with a customer learning curve to climb first. Competitive alternatives can be other solution providers as well. If the need to convey a simple two-sentence letter or attach a light-weight document can be satisfied with other communication platforms such as messenger apps Facebook Messenger or Signal, then those are competitive alternatives too.
The Key Unique Attributes of ProtonMail’s products can be seen on its website. For economy of words, let’s focus on what the company probably considers the two most important. Firstly, in contrast with the majority of the other ESPs, ProtonMail engulfs user data inside the hyper-strict privacy laws of Switzerland. Additionally, email communication via ProtonMail is end-to-end and zero-access encrypted, which ultimately means that “even we cannot decrypt and read your emails” as ProtonMail says. Secondly, the business model is different from most competitors too. Instead of collecting customer data to sell them to advertisers, ProtonMail does not ask for a single piece of personal info and they only monetize premium email features. These two key unique attributes really set this company apart from the rest.
The Value provided to consumers is also special. Users feel safe about retaining their anonymity and reducing data-leak risks. What is more, they can feel the certainty or even the relief that their usage behavior will not be used to advertise stuff to them. ProtonMail has one of the most amazing (and cool) proofs of its value proposition. Not only has there never been a data-leak or a discovered user, but the company stores data inside an unbreachable ex-military bunker under 3,300 ft of granite rock in Attinghausen.
The last question to ask is, which is the Customer Segment that cares a lot about your product? It must be people who really want to remain anonymous and whose data must really be kept secret, as people in countries where the government can access their email-box and coerce them, or people who carry important documents with them and who don’t want to be given away. As ProtonMail suggests, some of the most prominent customers have been Hong Kong protestors and New York Times journalists. In other words, ProtonMail targets highly-sensitive people with regards to privacy.
Overall, the Positioning Canvas is a simple, succinct, and powerful tool for Marketers to use. Simple, because by using only one page, you can get the picture around the positioning of a product. Succinct, because it is broken down into five understandable components filled with valuable and decision-supportive information. Powerful, because it is understandable, info-transmittable, and easy-to-use.
As in anything, it is small details that make a big difference. Adding this one tool into your Marketing Strategy can do exactly that.
