Product Positioning Framework

W-NP-D or the Framework

This is the framework I have been using for some time with teams I mentor. It always starts from one simple question - WHY?

Instruction how to use the framework is below. This post was inspired by the calls I had with few founders I mentored during FemTech Lab Acceleator program, as one of the founders said: "All of the sudden I had clarity, why things were not working, it was so obvious once we went through the framework". I hope it helps fellow founders and product marketing managers launching new products and features.

Step 1. Answer the Whys.

Why is this product needed?
Why you believe it will be useful?
Why is it interesting for you?
Why would it be interesting for others?
Why now?

Something big, contextual and a bit abstract like this allows us to build the base and guide the narrative .Go deep into motivations, passions, interests, beliefs of founder if that's a completely new product or idea. Goal of this step is to boil it down to the problem the product owner wants to tackle with a clear why. It was amazing to see how clear the WHY of founding team of PANGAIA was, it helped us a lot in building the pre-launch product and set the base. And from what I can see these values are still unchanged, although product had it's few iterations in the design.

Step 2. Nail positioning.

Or what I call connecting the dots. It has 3 steps and this can be done one after another or in parallel in case of more established product.
A. Market research

What are the customer groups which have this problem?
What is the experience they are having?
How else this problem can be solved?
are there any other ways to solve it?
How many customers have this problem?
what is the addressable market size?

B. Meet your User.
Yes, actually meet. When I was at Nike we used to have consumer breakfast every other Friday with our non-runners target group and I ran with our customers twice a week. Unless you have that zoom, coffee meeting or a survey, you won't be able to get to the bottom of insights, values and needs if your customers.

C. Product features & values analysis.
What you can offer technically and product wise to your customers? What are the values these features can bring?

Step 3. Designing product right.

Design product right is a Loop :) Few important things I learned at Picsart:
A. this is a continuous process (never ever done!)
B. you launch fast not waiting for the perfect product + do many tests! (this still hurts my perfectionism, but this is the right way!)
C. you should (!) fail and learn from failed attempts, this helps build a better product.

In Conclusion

This framework has proven itself work very well for established products or scaleups. If you are in the ideation (pre-MVP) process and pre product market fit phase, there is another way to approach product strategy and positioning. Stay tuned for the next framework.