Obviously Awesome Review: SaaS Positioning Framework Explained
Obviously Awesome Review: this is the book you need if your product is genuinely good but nobody can explain why it beats the alternatives. April Dunford spent 25 years as a repeat VP of Marketing at seven startups, plus stints at IBM, Siebel Systems, and Nortel, before becoming a positioning consultant in 2015. The book distills everything she learned into a practical, repeatable process.
Who Should Read Obviously Awesome
If your sales team keeps saying “prospects don’t get why we’re different,” or every deal gets compared to a completely different type of product, the issue usually isn’t the product, it’s the positioning. That’s exactly what this book fixes.
Positioning vs. Branding: A Common Mix-Up
A common mistake is confusing positioning with branding. Branding is the feel and visual identity; positioning is the underlying decision about which market you’re competing in, against whom, and for which specific customer. Without clear positioning, even beautiful brand work won’t convince anyone to buy.
The Framework: Five Components of Positioning
Dunford breaks positioning into five components that must be worked through in this exact order: competitive alternatives, what would the customer do if your product didn’t exist; unique attributes, what you do that nobody else does the same way; value and proof, the real value those attributes deliver and how you prove it; target market characteristics, who actually cares about that value; and market category, the context that makes your value obvious to that customer. A bonus sixth component, relevant trends, helps connect your positioning to the current market moment.
Why the Order Matters
The most common mistake: companies start from market category, labeling themselves “a CRM platform,” for example, before figuring out who they’re actually competing against in the customer’s mind. Dunford argues the opposite: start with competitive alternatives, because that decision shapes everything downstream. A simple example: if your product is a financial reporting tool, your real alternative might be Excel, an outside accountant, or simply not reporting at all. Each of those three alternatives demands a completely different message.
Applying This to SaaS and ERP Marketing in Egypt
In the Egyptian ERP market specifically, the competitive alternative is rarely another vendor, it’s Excel or a manual process. That changes the positioning entirely: the message isn’t “we’re faster than Competitor X,” it’s “we’re safer and clearer than how you’re running things today.” That’s exactly the kind of decision Dunford’s framework forces you to make explicitly instead of guessing.
If you’re not sure who your real competitive alternative is, try this with five current customers: “If our product didn’t exist, what would you do instead?” The answers usually surprise you, and they show that your real competitor isn’t always the one in your competitor analysis deck.
Where the Book Falls Short
The book is intensely practical, which is its strength, but that also means it doesn’t go deep on brand strategy or demand generation the way other marketing books do. Treat it as a tactical positioning tool, not a full marketing strategy.
The One Thing to Take Away From Obviously Awesome
If you can’t state in one sentence what your customer is using instead of you today, you don’t have a positioning, you have a product description. That’s the single most common mistake on SaaS and ERP landing pages in this region.
When to Rewrite Your Positioning
Dunford recommends revisiting positioning in specific moments, not just once at launch: entering a new market, a competitor reshaping the category, sales complaining the message stopped working, or a significant product change. Positioning should also be a team exercise, not one marketer’s solo work, since sales, product, and marketing each see a different angle of the same problem, and shared agreement keeps the message consistent from the landing page to the first sales call.
This connects directly to another piece we’ve written: why hiding pricing slows down the B2B SaaS and ERP sales cycle. If you can’t explain your positioning in one sentence, the customer needs far more calls to understand why they should buy from you, and that’s exactly what drags out the sales cycle.
Obviously Awesome pairs directly with Crossing the Chasm: Moore’s beachhead strategy only works if the positioning inside that beachhead is sharp, and that’s precisely what Dunford’s framework delivers.
Obviously Awesome Review in one line: it’s one of the shortest, most applicable marketing books you’ll read, and applying it correctly will change every landing page and every sales message you write.
This article is also available in Arabic: اقرأ بالعربي