Free template · Positioning
Positioning statement template for B2B SaaS (April Dunford's method)
What it is: a positioning statement template walks you through April Dunford's five components — competitive alternatives, unique attributes, value, best-fit customers and market category — in that order, then turns them into one sentence and a homepage headline. Use it before rewriting your homepage, or when buyers compare you to the wrong products.
What's in the template
Before you start: best-fit customers, the right team, no baggage.
Competitive alternatives: what buyers would really do without you.
Unique attributes: what you do that those alternatives can't.
Value and proof: the outcomes those attributes create.
Best-fit customers: who cares most, and why now.
Market category: the frame that makes your value obvious.
Statement and homepage: one sentence, a headline, a subheadline, a sales-call line.
Stress test: 14 pass/fail checks before you ship it.
How to fill it in
- Start from your best-fit customers. List the ones who bought fastest, stayed longest and got the most value. With fewer than 10 customers there's no pattern yet — use your strongest prospects and mark everything as a hypothesis.
- Do it with your co-founders. April Dunford's process starts by forming a positioning team, and for a startup that team is the founders. Positioning decides who you sell to and what you build; it isn't a marketing task.
- Let go of the category you started in. The label you picked on day one isn't necessarily the one that makes your value obvious today.
- Fill in the five components in order: competitive alternatives → unique attributes → value → who cares most → market category. Founders who start at "what's our category?" are doing it backwards.
- Write the statement, then the homepage lines. One internal sentence, then a headline, a subheadline and the two or three sentences you'll say when a prospect asks what it is.
- Run the stress test. Every fail points back to a component to redo — not to a better adjective.
- Test it on real prospects this week. Say it once to five people you can reach — customers, trials, your pipeline. Can they repeat it back? What do they compare you to?
Mazo's rule of thumb: if you can't name what your best customer would do without you — including a spreadsheet, a hire or doing nothing — you don't have positioning yet, you have a feature list. Start there, not at the headline.
A filled-in example
Here's the template completed for a made-up company, from alternatives all the way to the homepage headline.
Fictional example
Paperkite is a fictional B2B SaaS company: software that collects year-end documents from clients for accounting firms, at €500 a month per firm, with 12 paying firms. The company, customers and results are invented and deliberately round.
Before you start: best-fit customers
Firms of 10–30 staff with a dedicated admin who chases clients for documents. The fastest to sign had just come through a busy season with late filings.
1. Competitive alternatives
| Alternative | What it costs them today | Where it falls short |
|---|---|---|
| Email plus a shared spreadsheet of who sent what | Admin hours every week of busy season | Nothing chases automatically; someone has to remember, client by client |
| The client portal in the practice software they already pay for | Already paid for — so "cheaper" won't win | Stores documents but doesn't chase; clients forget their logins |
| A temporary hire phoning clients in busy season | A salary for the season | Stops when the contract ends |
| Doing nothing: partners chase at the deadline | Late filings and weekend work | The cost lands on the most expensive people in the firm |
2. Unique attributes
| Attribute | Which alternative lacks it | Proof it's real |
|---|---|---|
| Reminders by email and text message that stop the moment a document arrives | Spreadsheet, portal, temporary hire | Visible in a five-minute demo |
| Clients upload from a link, with no account or login | Portal | Visible in a five-minute demo |
| A live checklist per client showing exactly what's still missing | Spreadsheet, doing nothing | Visible in a five-minute demo |
3. Value and proof
| Value theme | Attributes behind it | Proof |
|---|---|---|
| Client documents in before the deadline, without anyone chasing | Self-stopping reminders; login-free upload | 9 of 12 customers finished year-end collection earlier than the season before |
| Partners see who's late at a glance | Live checklist per client | Claim still to prove — ask 3 customers for a before-and-after |
4. Best-fit customers: who cares most
| Who they are | Accounting firms with 10–30 staff and a dedicated admin |
|---|---|
| The situation that makes the value urgent | A busy season that ran late, or the admin who did the chasing leaving |
| What they share that others don't | Hundreds of individual clients to collect from every year-end, and no one whose whole job is chasing |
| Who it's not for | One-person practices (too few clients to feel the pain) and firms over 100 staff (they want chasing inside their existing suite) |
5. Market category
| Candidate category | What buyers expect from it | Do the strengths look obvious? |
|---|---|---|
| Practice management software | Billing, time tracking, workflow, a client portal | No — Paperkite looks like a worse version of the big suites |
| Client portal | Secure storage and sharing | Partly — chasing looks like an odd extra |
| Document collection software for accounting firms (chosen) | Requests, reminders, checklists | Yes — chasing is exactly what buyers expect, done better |
Trend: none. "AI" doesn't make chasing clients more valuable to these buyers, so it's left out.
6. The positioning statement
Paperkite is document collection software for accounting firms of 10–30 staff who need client documents in before the deadline, without an admin chasing by email and phone. Unlike email and a spreadsheet, it chases for you and stops the moment a document arrives — and 9 of our 12 customers finished year-end collection earlier than the season before.
7. From statement to homepage
Headline (8 words)Client documents in on time, without the chasing
Subheadline (22 words)Document collection for accounting firms of 10–30 staff. Reminders stop the moment a file arrives, and clients upload without a login.
Say it on sales callsMost firms we talk to chase documents with email and a spreadsheet, or a portal clients never log into. Paperkite sends the reminders for you and stops the moment the file lands — clients upload from a link, no login. Nine of our twelve customers finished year-end collection earlier than the season before.
Stress test: 13 of 14 pass. Check 4 fails until the second value theme has proof.
Positioning statement template
Blank template with stress test · based on April Dunford's process
Product: name · Written by: founders · Date: date · Status: hypothesis / based on 10+ customers
Before you start: your best-fit customers
| Our best-fit customers | bought fastest, stayed longest, got the most value |
|---|---|
| What they have in common | beyond industry and size |
| The category we started in (and are willing to drop) |
1. Competitive alternatives
Ask yourself:
- If we didn't exist, what would our best-fit customers do?
- What were they using the day before they bought?
- Which of these is free or already paid for? (Then "cheaper" isn't a reason to switch.)
| Alternativeinclude a spreadsheet, a hire, doing nothing, a feature they already pay for | What it costs them todaytime, money, risk | Where it falls short for them |
|---|---|---|
2. Unique attributes
Ask yourself:
- What can we do that those alternatives structurally can't — not just "better"?
- Could a competitor copy it next month?
- What proves it's real: a demo, a customer result, data?
"Easier", "faster", "cheaper" and "AI" count only when they're tied to something an alternative structurally can't do.
| Attribute | Which alternative lacks it | Proof it's real |
|---|---|---|
3. Value and proof
Ask yourself:
- What does each attribute let the customer achieve, in an outcome they measure?
- Which attributes cluster into the same outcome? (Aim for 2–3 themes.)
- Can we prove each one? If not, mark it as a claim still to prove.
| Value themea customer outcome, not a capability | Attributes behind it | Proofor "claim still to prove" |
|---|---|---|
4. Best-fit customers: who cares most
Ask yourself:
- For whom is this value urgent, not just nice to have?
- What was true about their situation when they bought fast?
- Who looks similar on paper but doesn't care?
| Who they are | company type, size, the role that feels the pain |
|---|---|
| The situation that makes the value urgent | the trigger |
| What they share that others don't | |
| Who it's not for |
5. Market category
Ask yourself:
- Which frame makes our value obvious to these buyers?
- What will buyers expect from us in this category — features, price, competitors?
- In this category, are our strengths obvious, or oddities? Do we look like a worse version of the leader?
| Candidate category | What buyers expect from it | Do our strengths look obvious? Why? |
|---|---|---|
| The category we claim | |
|---|---|
| Optional: a trend that genuinely amplifies the value | or "none" — a trend without a clear category confuses |
6. The positioning statement
This is internal: the source your homepage, sales deck and pitch are written from. Fill in the blanks, then rewrite it until it reads like a sentence a person would say.
Product is a market category for best-fit customers who need value theme without the main alternative's problem. Unlike main alternative, we unique attribute — proof.
7. From statement to homepage
| Headline (under 10 words) | the outcome or job in your buyer's words, implying what it replaces: get from X to Y without Z |
|---|---|
| Subheadline (under 25 words) | who it's for + what's structurally different + your proof |
| Alternative headline | to test against the first |
| Say it on sales calls (2–3 sentences) | the alternative they use today, what's different, the outcome with proof |
| Words to delete from the page | e.g. platform, all-in-one, modern, powerful, seamless |
8. Stress test
Tick each check that passes. Borderline is a fail. A fail in checks 1–8 means redoing a component; fails only in 9–14 are a copy problem.
- Buyers compare you to what they'd actually do, not only to your competitor list.
- You can't undercut something that costs nothing extra.
- "Better", "easier" or "AI" on their own are claims every competitor makes.
- Value without proof is a promise buyers discount to zero.
- Buyers buy outcomes they can measure; features are how you deliver them.
- The trigger is what makes the value urgent — and tells you who to call first.
- Derive it from evidence, not from who you'd like to sell to.
- The category sets every expectation: competitors, features and price.
- No competitors usually means no budget line to buy from.
- Products that list six jobs get hired for none (Des Traynor).
- A first-time visitor should know what you are in seconds.
- It does the job the headline can't: qualify the reader and give the reason to believe.
- One invented claim makes buyers doubt every true one.
- If they can't repeat it, they can't sell it to their boss.
Positioning template based on April Dunford's Obviously Awesome process, adapted by Mazo.
Positioning statement template · Free template by Mazo · getmazo.com/templates/positioning-statement-template
Common positioning mistakes
- Starting with the category. The category is the last decision, not the first — it should frame value you've already identified.
- Listing competitors instead of alternatives. Your real competition is often a spreadsheet, a hire or doing nothing.
- Attributes nobody can check. "Easy to use" and "AI-powered" aren't unique; something the alternative structurally can't do is.
- Defining the customer by demographics alone. "B2B SaaS, 10–200 people" says who could buy, not who cares most right now.
- Inventing a category too early. Creating a category means naming a problem the market hasn't named and educating buyers for years before they look for you.
- Shipping the statement as the headline. The statement is internal. The homepage needs the outcome in the buyer's words.
- Writing it once and never testing it. If prospects can't repeat it back, it isn't finished.
Mazo's rule of thumb: before €1M ARR, niche down a category buyers already understand — "document collection for accounting firms" — rather than inventing a new noun. "We have no competitors" usually means "we have no budget line", and that makes every deal harder.
Or let Mazo stress-test it for you
The free positioning stress test takes your alternatives, differentiator and target customer — plus your homepage copy if you paste it — and returns a Clear, Muddy or Broken verdict with a rewritten headline. No account needed.
Who wrote this
Madalena Rugeroni built Mazo. She's an ex-Googler, a startup advisor and investor, and runs a portfolio of internet companies. Before that, as Head of Growth at Amplemarket, she scaled a B2B SaaS to $10M ARR. LinkedIn
FAQ
What is a positioning statement?
An internal sentence that captures how you want the right buyers to understand your product: the category you compete in, who it's for, the value you deliver and the alternative you replace. It isn't homepage copy — it's the source your homepage, sales deck and pitch are written from.
What's the difference between positioning and messaging?
Positioning is the set of decisions: alternatives, unique attributes, value, best-fit customers and category. Messaging is the words that communicate those decisions on your homepage, in your deck and on calls. Rewriting messaging on top of unclear positioning just produces better-sounding confusion.
Who should write a startup's positioning?
The founders. April Dunford's process starts by forming a positioning team, and for a startup that team is the founders — because positioning decides who you sell to and what you build, not just what the website says.
Should an early-stage startup create a new market category?
Usually not. Creating a category means naming a problem the market hasn't named and educating buyers for years — the category design approach Christopher Lochhead describes in Play Bigger. Before €1M ARR, Mazo's default is to compete in a category buyers already understand, or niche one down.
Get positioning your buyers can repeat
Mazo works through your positioning with you from real customer evidence, then turns it into your homepage, pitch and outbound — and checks whether it lands. €99 a month, 14 days free.
Start 14-day free trial Not ready? Run the free positioning stress test, no account needed →Sources and further reading. April Dunford (Obviously Awesome) for the positioning process and components; Des Traynor (jobs-to-be-done messaging); Christopher Lochhead (Play Bigger, category design). These are published methodologies credited to their authors; Mazo is not affiliated with or endorsed by them. Paperkite is a fictional company and its results are invented for illustration.