Communication is the key to positioning

The purpose of a startup is creating a product which solves a customer’s pain - also referred to as product value. Startups don’t fail because they are not able to build a product, most of the time they fail because they can’t communicate their product value and their vision to its customers. Customers don’t buy a set of features, they buy a vision. Creating a customer is creating the right message. Successful communication is sending out the right message to the right audience at the right time.

Successful communication needs a strategy

Communication is not only about some texts on a website, an article on a blog or a post on Facebook. It's about sending a consistent message to your users. It's repeatedly telling what you are doing, what you stand for and how you as a brand want to be perceived by others - in many different ways, on many different channels.

What’s called luck is usually an outgrowth of successful communication. 
 Al Ries, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind

A company constantly needs to communicate its product value and improve how it communicates to its customers. In order to achieve successful communication, it needs to find an effective way to communicate its product value. Only if a startup reaches the right customer with the right message it can find sufficient demand in the market and therefore reach product/market fit.

Communication is positioning

To stand out among other companies a startup needs to position the product within the market. Positioning is how a product is perceived in the mind of a customer, it focuses on the receiving end of the communication process. To achieve that it needs to communicate the right message to create a mental perception in the prospective client's mind.

In our overcommunicated society, the paradox is that nothing is more important than communication.
 Al Ries, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind

This can go even as far that a brand completely owns a product category. Think of "Kleenex" instead of tissues, "Post-it" instead of sticky notes, "Tupperware" instead of plastic food containers, "Google" instead of search engines or "PowerPoint" instead of presentation software. These brands created a completely unique perception in the customers mind which is so strong that it's often used to describe any brand in their respective product category.

Only through successful communication and positioning you can climb up the ladder to the customer's top of mind.

Communication is everywhere

Communication has many faces, it can be friends talking over a beer, a group of people texting each other in a group chat, journalists or bloggers talking to their readers through an article, a politician giving a speach or even a company communicating their product through advertisement. Everything is communication and it's everywhere.

With around 3.5 billion people worldwide having access to the Internet there has never been such an overflow of communication. Platforms such as Facebook, Instagram or SnapChat and messengers such as WhatsApp, Messenger or WeChat have made it easier to stay in touch and to reach our friends at any time, meet new friends online or even communicate with strangers.

With all that communication noise we deal on a daily basis it's hard to stand out as a startup, reach users and even more sending the right message to the right audience. That's why it's even more important to create a strategy and think of the best channels to target your audience. Especially with the very limited resources of a startup you don't want to shoot your message out into the wild blindfolded. It's important to analyze your prospective clients, the kind of information they are looking for and on what channels you can reach them easiest. Only with a clear strategy you can reach your customers effectively.

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This article was first published at the oratio Blog.